Death's Reckless Reaper

by Ruby Loren

  Death's Reckless Reaper

  January Chevalier Supernatural Mysteries

  Silver Nord

  Ruby Loren

  Copyright © 2017 by Ruby Loren and Silver Nord

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  British Author

  Please Read First!

  Books in the Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Books in the Series

  British Author

  Please note, this book is written in British English and contains British spellings.

  Please Read First!

  This book contains spoilers for Death’s Dark Horse, the first book in the January Chevalier series.

  Please read Death’s Dark Horse before reading this prequel!

  Death’s Dark Horse

  Books in the Series

  Death’s Dark Horse

  * * *

  Death’s Cursed Coven

  * * *

  Death’s Endless Enchanter

  * * *

  Death’s Ethereal Enemy

  * * *

  Death’s Last Laugh

  * * *

  Prequel: Death’s Reckless Reaper

  1

  This book contains spoilers for Death’s Dark Horse, the first book in the January Chevalier series.

  Please read Death’s Dark Horse before reading this prequel!

  Death’s Dark Horse

  January wasn’t sure why she'd decided to take the train to Paris. She supposed that logically, her parents were less likely to have people waiting for her at the train station than at the airport. But then, she very much doubted that anyone was looking for her.

  She turned her head and looked out of the window, wondering if she’d really picked this journey so she’d have more time to think things through. Ever since she’d called the be-spelled telephone number that she’d seen on the club wall and had been given the job as a vampire bounty hunter, she hadn’t had a quiet moment. The ironic How to Kill a Vampire book had arrived in the post yesterday, and it had only been that morning she’d told her parents she was leaving – for good.

  They hadn’t said much when January had packed a small bag and walked out of the door. She wondered if they still thought she was kidding.

  Perhaps they simply didn’t care. She’d never felt welcome in the family of shifter-horses. Mainly because she wasn’t one of them. By some strange quirk of genetics - or magic - when January had experienced her first full moon shift, it hadn’t been a beautiful white horse she’d turned into. Instead, when the static had cleared, a black unicorn had looked back at her from the surface of the lake in the woods.

  Looking back, she probably should have seen it coming. Even before her first shift, she’d always stuck out from her family. They were all porcelain-skinned, dark-haired, and glamorous - like gothic super models. She was pale with white-blonde hair that hung in curls. She supposed it was another cruel quirk of genetics that they turned into white horses and she, the polar opposite. Her transformation could only have been more apt if she’d literally turned into the black sheep of the family.

  But a black unicorn was probably close enough.

  Everything is about to change, she thought to herself. The whisper of a smile crossed her lips when the train emerged from the tunnel and crossed the green countryside of northern France. She had ten thousand pounds in her bank account and the promise of a lot more once she reached Paris. All she had to do in return for her new life was to dispatch a few vampires. And vampires were bad – every shifter knew that. They definitely deserved what was coming to them.

  January bit her lip.

  She would have to work a little harder to convince herself.

  She reached into her bag and her hand touched the aged cover of the book her mysterious employers had sent her as a little light reading. Glancing around, she pulled it out and opened it up, hoping that no one would remember the girl with the ancient tome. Her eyes came to rest on the first line of the book and she began to read what was soon to become her bible and her best friend.

  January blinked and looked up when the announcement informed her that they’d arrived at Gare Du Nord, Paris. She looked down at the large tome and discovered she was close to finishing it. For something this old, it was a surprisingly good read. She’d learnt a good deal about vampires that she’d never known before. In the back of her mind, she had many questions about how the person who had found out all of these secrets had persuaded the vampires to confide them.

  She had a feeling that she probably didn’t want to know the answer.

  January gathered her sparse belongings and got off the train, walking across the platforms and marvelling at the feeling of having her own time and money. Back home in Hailfield, her parents had forced her to learn the family insurance trade, despite her insistence that she would never take on the business. She’d also had a part-time job, working behind a bar in Witchwood. But it would never have been enough for her to move out - even subsidised with the money she got for the gigs she played.

  January blew a sweaty blonde tendril out of her eyes and acknowledged how warm a day it was for early spring. She shook her head and thought back to her old life. Her greatest hope had been that she might get in with a good functions band and scrape a living travelling around playing weddings.

  Somehow she knew that that particular dream was now long gone.

  She walked along the grey paved streets, wondering why everyone raved about Paris in the springtime. It was nice, but not a patch on the rural South of England where she’d come from. She bit her lip and felt homesick for a second before shaking it off. A new life was exactly what she needed.

  January was walking along a line of cheap looking hotels when the phone rang.

  She frowned and glanced around. It wasn’t her mobile ringing and there was no one else nearby. It was then that she realised the sound was coming from the telephone box on the edge of the pavement. She walked over to the box, surrounded by panes of broken glass and scrawled all over with graffiti. Frankly, she was amazed that the phone itself was still functional. She stared at the ringing handset and winced. Her gut feeling was telling her that this was a phone call for her, however unlikely that seemed.

  “Hello?” She said, raising the phone to ear level and then wondering if she should have spoken in French. Her parents had sent her to France for a whole year when she’d been seven, so she could learn the language, but it had been years since she’d spoken French and she probably still spoke it like a kid. Rusty didn’t quite cover it.

  “Target is Warren Duchamp, five hundred thousand.” The line went dead and January blinked. Had she just been given the name of the first vampire she was supposed to kill? She sucked in a deep breath and regretted it when the smell of the phone booth was magnified by her shifter senses. Her mind focused on what the disembodied voice had said just after the name. That was a lot of money. She frowned, feeling lightheaded. She walked across to a nearby bank machine, took out her card and checked her balance.

  It was written in Euros, but she could estimate the exchange all the same. An extra two hundred and fifty grand had been added to her account, as promised – half now and half when the job was done. January glanced back at the line of cheap hotels and wondered if she should go for something a little more upmarket - like a p
enthouse room in the biggest, grandest place she could find. She smiled a little at the idea and shook her head. She was new to this game, but thought she could guess one rule: don’t draw attention to yourself. Staying in an affordable hotel until she could find a place to rent would definitely be the smart thing to do.

  Tonight, she would start hunting Warren Duchamp.

  2

  Three days later, she was in a new apartment complete with new furniture. Life would have been pretty much perfect if it weren’t for the fact she was already failing.

  She had absolutely no idea who Warren Duchamp was.

  A spot of internet sleuthing had earned her nothing, and it wasn’t as if she could ask anyone where the nearest vampire hangout was. Her lip had been chewed so much that her skin was cracking, and she was starting to wonder when her employers would write her off as a failure.

  Then she’d have a very different problem to worry about.

  They’d made it clear that failure wasn’t an option. If these people were willing to pay one person to kill another, she was willing to bet they’d have no compunction about adding her name to the ‘to kill’ list if she messed up.

  “Would it have hurt to drop a few hints about this guy?” She muttered, staring at the still-blank laptop screen before slamming it shut in disgust. “Stuff it. I’m making cake,” she said and started throwing various ingredients together.

  She didn’t know it then, but it would be a long time before she felt like baking again.

  Paris was not an ideal place for a unicorn shape-shifter to let loose.

  It was a full moon night and January had picked the Vexin Nature Park - just outside of Paris - as the best place to shift. It was far from perfect. While there were a few forested areas, it was hardly what you’d call secluded and January knew she’d have to be on alert the whole time.

  She laid her clothes down and gritted her teeth against the night’s chill. Here we go, she thought and summoned the energy for the shift, aided by the power of the full moon. Her bones had just started to crack when she caught a whiff of something.

  Wolves! She thought with a stab of panic and halted the shift. It took a huge effort and she was sweating by the time she was fully human again. January wasted no time feeling surprised that she’d been able to exercise so much control and instead threw on her clothes.

  She was just in time.

  A big, nearly white wolf appeared through the bushes. January stared awkwardly at it. There was no way of communicating with another shifter, unless you were both in either animal or human form. She suspected that this wolf had been sent forwards by the pack to find out if she was a normal (albeit strange) human, out for a midnight stroll. It would be easy to mistake this particular wolf for a large dog.

  The wolf sniffed the air and then disappeared back into the bushes. January chewed her lip. Things might be about to go south.

  A naked man walked back through the bushes that the wolf had disappeared through. January kept her eyes above waist level only and wondered if he’d been the white wolf.

  “Who are you?” He asked, speaking fast and fluent French.

  January blinked and found that the words had returned to her head. “Just a shifter out for a full moon walk,” she said, tilting her head in what she hoped was a non-threatening way. “Am I in the wrong place?”

  The wolf man in front of her barked with laughter. “This is just about the only place there is around here. You must be from the country, or you’d know. No one gets territory in a city, you just live and let live.”

  He still didn’t smile or relax his posture. January strongly suspected that wasn’t the whole truth.

  “Are you telling me you’re a lone wolf?” She asked, knowing full well that he wasn’t. She could smell others. They were close.

  The wolf man finally broke and his lips moved upwards for a fraction of a second. “No territory, but there are still rules. My pack are the enforcers for Paris. Come and meet our leader.”

  It wasn’t a request, January realised, but she followed him all the same. She had no reason to pick a fight with a Parisian pack during her first week in Paris. She was also willing to bet that this pack of ‘enforcers’ probably had their noses firmly stuck into everyone’s business – including the local vampires’.

  January followed the still-anonymous man through the bushes and found herself in a giant circle of wolves. She had known there were others in the woods but hadn’t expected there to be this many. This must be the only pack in Paris, she thought, understanding how it had grown to such super-sized proportions. No one in their right mind would ever challenge their authority.

  A tall, dark man in his early thirties emerged from the circle, in human form so that they could talk. January inclined her head, not low enough for submission. He raised an eyebrow and she wondered if she’d already messed up on her shifter etiquette. She wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Her parents had hidden her away from her peers ever since she’d first changed. They’d told her that she would always be in danger. People would put her on display or try to kill her as a trophy. January hoped that they were wrong about that, but years of their insistence meant that she hadn’t shown her animal form to another of the two-natured beyond her family group. Tonight wasn’t going to be the night that changed.

  “I’m George, the pack leader. You’re a horse.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  January tried not to smile at the assumption. “My name is January,” she said and then wondered if she should have revealed that much.

  Should she have a false identity? The book on vampire killing had merely been a practical guide. It wasn’t advice for budding bounty hunters. She bit her lip and wondered if her mysterious employers might have another ancient tome of top-tips that they could send her.

  “January. Right.” The head werewolf didn’t look impressed, despite her decision to translate her name into French to make it easier for pronunciation purposes. “Law of the land here is to stay hidden and get along. No fights and no getting seen.” His eyes raked up and down her, disparagingly. “You fall into the harder to conceal category. If anyone sees a horse running loose, they report it. Could be worse though, at least you’re nothing dangerous, like the big cats.”

  January had to concede that he was right with that judgement. She may currently be charged with the assassination of an unknown vampire, but so far, she’d never hurt a fly. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered what the anonymous people on the other end of the phone saw in her.

  “I think I’ve got it,” she said to the wolf.

  When no one said anymore, she walked back out of the clearing and went straight back to the apartment, vowing to buy a car the next day and drive to some place free from a horde of wolves. The fewer the people who knew of the existence of a unicorn in Paris, the better. Who knew what would happen after she’d dispatched the vampire? Her mouth set in a line. You can do this! This is the way to a new life - forever, she thought and knew it was true.

  There was no way out now.

  January walked out of her apartment early the next morning and collided with the man who’d been loitering outside her door. She was immediately overwhelmed with the scent of his second nature and jumped back a full step. Wolf! Her mind screamed, and she regarded him warily.

  His mouth curved up into a smile and January suddenly realised he was extraordinarily good looking. He had movie-star, dark blonde hair, dark eyebrows and a pair of brown eyes so sincere you would never be able to doubt a word that came from his pretty, bowed mouth. January shook her head, wondering if the collision had jarred her brain.

  “I’m James Cray,” he said, and January realised that he’d spoken perfect English without an accent.

  Her eyebrows shot up and he smiled at her some more.

  “I was in the pack last night and noticed you were British and clearly new in town. I thought I might…”

  “Show me around?” January finished
, unconvinced.

  This seemed like the most transparent attempt to spy on someone ever.

  James leant back against the brick wall and tilted his head at her. “Well, if you like, but I figured someone smart like you probably already knew the ins and outs - especially as you’ve clearly been to France before. I was thinking more along the lines of… going out for a drink,” he finished.

  His eyes widened, imploring her to say yes.

  She folded her arms, ignoring the way her stomach had flipped when he’d basically asked her out on a date. “Sure,” she said, shrugging a little as she failed to think of a way out of this one.

  If he was spying, he’d find out pretty soon that there wasn’t much to her. She certainly wouldn’t be spilling any of her secrets to him. But then, perhaps he would spill some of his own…

  “Hey, I think I came face to face with pretty much every shifter in Paris last night, but I was wondering where the others go? You know… the other supers. Back home, the leader of the local vampire population owns a pub,” she said and then bit her tongue, wondering if even saying that was too much of a giveaway about her past.

  She didn’t want anyone to be able to do any digging.

  James raised his eyebrows. “Why do you care about vampires?”

  “So I can avoid running into them,” she replied, keeping her face completely blank of expression.