by Rhea Watson
But confident now.
Self-possessed tonight.
Utterly in her element.
It was a breathtaking sight. She had never looked more tempting, even with her back to me—especially with her back to me.
Perhaps this was why the others had enjoyed reaping so much. Maybe it wasn’t the souls at all, but the surefooted stride of the reaper who had bewitched us from the moment we first set eyes on her.
Those online relationship articles had gotten one thing right: confidence was sexy as fuck.
We finally stopped at a house that looked like all the rest, the walls dark grey, the roof shingles black and gleaming from a recent downpour. A small vehicle sat on the cracked driveway. The grass, I noted, was far greener than the lawns on either side of the property, and the garden had been tended to by a loving hand, landscaped and prim. A red front door. A metal letterbox with newspapers sticking out its top. Ordinary.
“This is going to be a tense situation,” Hazel said, the octave of her voice slightly different from her usual sweetness. Here, it carried the gravity of our task, and I jogged to her side, claws scratching across the sidewalk, and plopped down to observe. She gripped her scythe loosely, arm hanging between us, until the air exploded with the arrival of a new soul.
I stiffened, assaulted by the staticky surge humming within the celestial plane, deep and resonate, its vibrations rattling in my bones. Out of the corner of my eye, Hazel’s hand coiled tightly around her yew staff, and she shouldered her scythe with a resigned sigh.
“You have to do what I say in there, Knox.”
Faintly, over the explosive energy of the new soul and Hazel’s calm but firm tone, I heard a man sobbing inside the house. Swearing too, using words that made some humans blush. My gaze shot to the door, up the steps and across the little wood porch. Let me in. Let me see. All that I was as an alpha came to the forefront, but just as I lurched forward, body primed for conflict, for action, Hazel stepped in front of me.
“She needs you,” the reaper insisted, our eyes locked. “Comfort her. Protect her. She’s terrified.”
While I took in the words, I still found myself peering around Hazel at the house’s front door. Need to get in. Need to assess.
“Knox, do you understand?”
I huffed up at her, then licked at my jowls with a grunt. Of course I understood. It was just… That new soul, the raised voice, the shuttered windows and locked door blocking my view.
Distracting, all of it.
“Okay, let’s go, then.”
I fought the urge to shoot up onto all four paws and bolt for the door, instead stalking along at Hazel’s side up the stone path to the house. The soul’s vibrations intensified, making every hair stand on end when we finally crossed the threshold. Pot roast permeated the air, same as the scent of meat and gravy and cooked vegetables that had often filled our own kitchen. That and cigarette smoke, a smell I had become familiar with at the bar the other day, humans puffing away at white sticks on the patio.
We entered a small foyer first, but Hazel veered right immediately into the bright white light of a living room.
I staggered to a halt in the doorway.
Not just a living room—but a murder scene too.
For there, on the floor, was a battered woman’s corpse. Bloodied nose. Split lip. Black eyes—both of them swollen and bruised. Red hand marks around her throat. Blood down her torn blouse, her skirt hitched up to her bare thighs. One of her purple slippers hung off her foot, while the other lay in front of a muted television, the evening news plastered across the screen.
Behind her, a man on a chair. Average height, perhaps even slightly below. Average build. White-skinned, freckled, balding. He wore a sport jersey and a pair of blue jeans. A lit cigarette hung limply between two fingers, a breath away from the upholstery. Tears streaked down his cheeks. Blood marred his knuckles—her blood. Even on the celestial plane, I could smell it.
Jaw locked, I looked from the burning end of the cigarette to the small circular marks on the corpse’s left arm.
Hazel, meanwhile, had already crossed the room, her deathly presence engulfing the whole house as she descended upon a cowering figure in the corner.
“Stupid fucking whore,” the male muttered under his breath, words catching in his throat, thick and vile. The ring on his one finger matched the delicate gold bands on the corpse’s hand. Humans exchanged rings when they married.
My hackles rose, a low growl vibrating in my chest.
They were mates, him and her.
The dead body, bloodied and beaten and violated—
“Amy?”
Amy. Amy’s corpse smelled like blood and smoke, like the vanilla and bourbon candle Hazel had added to the TV room at the manor. Her scent was all over this space—the twin two-seater couches, the little pillows, the blanket folded neatly over the back of the armchair. Slowly, my gaze drifted to a kneeling Hazel, to the slim soul of a woman in the corner. A squeaky wail filled the room, made the drawn floral curtains shudder. Her mate didn’t notice, smoking and staring at her corpse, cursing so softly that a human might have missed it, but my sensitive ears heard every fucking word.
“My name is Hazel, and this is Knox.” She gestured back to me, and I forced myself to move, to march stiffly by the dead human on the floor. At least the damage didn’t carry over to her soul; Amy was fresh and bright now, clean and well-groomed, her auburn hair in tight ringlets around an angular face with hollow cheeks. Hazel placed a hand on her knee, and the soul pushed back into the corner, made herself small, covering her head with both arms—like Hazel might strike her at any moment.
“Fucking worthless bitch,” the male grunted. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him flick his cigarette at the corpse, then stand and disappear through another door deeper into the house. A moment later, rattling glass accompanied the whoosh of a refrigerator door opening.
“We’re here to take you to a better place,” Hazel murmured, situating herself so that Amy couldn’t stare at her own battered body. “I know it’s frightening, but you’re safe now…”
Strong and soft, this Hazel. A warrior with a gentle heart. As much as I longed to study her, reflect on her, I couldn’t focus on anything—couldn’t center my mind. Because there was all that blood weeping into the floor, between the wood panels, into the celestial plane. Then the vibrations of a new soul, sharp and vivid, deafening.
And the male.
I turned my back on him when he stumbled into the room again with a beer bottle in hand, gritting my teeth when he cracked it open. The metal cap landed on the floor seconds later—close to where he’d chucked the cigarette.
Next to her body.
Amy sobbed and buried her face in her hands, shaking, shaking, shaking so violently that it made my heart physically hurt. I crept closer, sniffing at her arms, her hidden face, her hair. My tongue swiped across her neck—a neck marred by her mate’s hands in the human realm, red and crushed—and instinct told me to hunker down, lie on top of her, make her feel safe and secure beneath me.
Security blankets. I’d read the phrase online, learned about compression therapy for humans who panicked like Declan once did, fighting for breath, heart racing, fear taking hold.
Only I couldn’t do any of that.
Because the male wouldn’t shut up.
Because that fucking piece of garbage had killed his mate.
And there was nothing worse, nothing fouler to my sensibilities, than the murder of one’s soul mate.
Fate gave you a gift.
“Look what you made me do,” the male grumbled from the armchair, kicking at her sprawled legs, her slipperless foot. “Fucking cunt, I told you not to push. All you do is push. And look what happens. Look what fucking happens.”
With Hazel softly murmuring to the soul, cooing and coaxing her to lower her hands, I stood guard. Fury pounded through me when the male stood, his next kick landing on the corpse’s side.
“I t
old you to mind your fucking business!” he bellowed, crouched over, screaming at the lifeless body as her soul wailed. Beer dribbled out the bottle, splattering over her bloody face, and he hurled it clear across the room. The shatter of glass had Amy’s soul collapsing further in on herself; she dropped to the floor and rolled into a ball, rocking back and forth, sobbing.
I turned away from her, fixated on this male, this pathetic creature.
“Look at what you did!” He kicked her again, then stomped on her ribs. “Look at what you did, Amy!”
Snarling, I took a step toward him. Rage replaced the sorrow in my heart. I’d swallowed it for years, beat it back down; no matter how furious I became with the circumstances, with our surroundings, with the treatment of Gunnar and Declan, I rarely responded unless directly attacked. I protected. I stood between an abuser and the abused. Always.
But he wouldn’t stop kicking her.
She was already dead, and still he pummeled her.
“Knox, let’s just go,” Hazel said distractedly. “We’ll deal with everything in Purgatory…”
He broke her nose with his heel, crushing bone and cartilage, flattening it like a fucking cardboard box.
Centuries of subdued rage finally came to a boil—and I snapped.
With a roar, I charged from one plane to the next, leaving the celestial behind and hurdling headlong into the mortal realm. The bastard staggered back, off-balance and blinking hard at me like I was some drunken hallucination.
He should know what I was: vengeance, penance, instant justice for the brutal act of butchering his mate.
Time seemed to slow when all four paws left the ground, my body flying toward him, teeth bared and snarl rattling the windows. Distantly, Hazel’s voice screamed through the planes, but with my heart drumming a battle cry, I barely heard it—didn’t even acknowledge it.
We collided seconds later like an avalanche blasting over a lone pine tree, ripping it from the earth, root and stem. The fucker collapsed, slamming his head to the floor, cracking bone, and I went for his face, snapping, snarling, painting him with saliva as a wildfire blazed through my veins. Red eyes glared down at him, yet all I saw was red too, the hazy tinge of pure rage clouding my vision, focusing it on the screeching human beneath me. My claws raked up his chest, splitting him open, shredding him like a knife through butter. Hot blood spurted up my legs, but I pressed on, refusing to yield until there was nothing left of him, until he was just bits of flesh and bone and teeth on the fucking floor.
He deserved no less.
“Knox!” Hazel’s cry came sharper this time, slicing through the fog. Footfalls clicked hurriedly across the hardwood to my left, even as I sank my teeth into the shrieking human’s shoulder. “Knox, stop!”
No. Never. Never would I—
I stilled when the cool touch of a reaper’s scythe settled against my throat. Human blood dripping down my jowls, I straightened and followed the staff all the way to her. She stood, paler than I’d ever seen her, eyes fixed on me, unnervingly still.
How dare she stop me?
How dare she rob me of this one justice?
I reared around the scythe, stabbing my front paw into the fucker’s open chest until a rib cracked.
Hazel pressed in harder, the blade cutting through fur, its power extinguishing the fire within me as easily as one blows out a candle. This thing could kill me. Shaking, rage still pounding with every beat of my heart, I looked to her and wondered: would she thrust deep? Slit my throat with a hook made of stars?
Yes.
No matter her feelings, no matter our connection—Hazel would kill me to protect this human.
It was her duty.
And I had—infringed on it.
“Step back,” she ordered firmly, and when I hesitated, she offered one last taste of her scythe’s bite. Although it physically pained me, I slowly complied, taking a few stiff, furious steps away from the human.
The murderer who lay in a puddle of his own blood and piss.
“Get back on the celestial plane,” Hazel growled, “and see to her soul. She is lost. She is broken. She is terrified.” The reaper situated herself between me and the sobbing ingrate, peering down her nose at me, only a slight quiver in her lips suggesting she wasn’t in complete control. That, like me, she was a second away from shattering. “Do your duty, Knox. Now.”
Hazel spoke of duty…
This should be my duty: punishing the wicked.
Perhaps I ought to work in the pits of Hell instead, inflicting punishment onto damned souls.
No. My eyes slid to the growing pool of bright red blood. No, I couldn’t torture the damned for eternity; I could barely stand to breathe the same air as this cretin.
“She needs you,” Hazel told me, her flat inflection hinting that this was the last warning I would get before I found the scythe at my throat again. While I hesitated at first, eventually I turned, my innate protectiveness forcing me to cross between realms. Annoyance ripened at the fact that she knew my trigger—that I would always defend the meek. It was what separated me from other alpha hellhounds: the need to protect the smallest among us rather than pit the others against them.
Amy’s soul remained in a tight ball on the floor, tearstained cheeks hidden behind her hands. I smelled the salty tang of sorrow as I approached, dropped to the ground, and positioned myself like a great furry black wall between her and her killer. While I would have preferred to focus on her, to lick her tears away, to nestle in so that her shaking body found warmth in mine, there was one big bloody distraction that I just couldn’t ignore.
In the mortal realm, Hazel crouched before the battered male. She traced her hands along the wounds, sealing them with the same grace and ease that she sealed our ward. Slowly, the color returned to his cheeks, the life to his eyes. He eventually found the strength to sit up and skitter back, crashing hard into the nearby couch with a cry. Hazel studied him for a moment, then crept closer. Her finger found his forehead, even as he shrank away, and once she made contact, the vile creature at her feet stilled, eyes glassy, jaw slack.
“You’ll forget the hellhound,” she said, firm and in control again. “The name Knox will mean nothing to you. The last five minutes never happened.” Her finger left his flesh—and she faltered. A heartbeat later, it was back, and her white brows crinkled. “But you will never forget what you did to her. You’ll never forget this night. You will remember, in painfully vivid detail, until the day you die how you killed her, the look in her eyes when you finally choked the life out of her. And deep down, you will understand, Christopher Morten, that when you die, we’ll be back for you. Knox and me, we’ll be waiting,” she whispered, “to take you straight to Hell.”
Withdrawing her hand, she stood with a disgusted look, then wiped her finger on her robe, as if to rid herself of this Christopher Morten for good. The human lay there on the floor, dazed, and only came to when Hazel stepped inside the celestial plane and left him utterly alone in the house, with the corpse of his mate and the faint knowledge that he was damned.
My eyes tracked her every movement back to Amy, even if she wouldn’t so much as glance my way. Hazel crouched at the soul’s side, expression hard, while I remained a silent, looming presence. At no point did I utter an apologetic whine, nor did I growl out my frustration that she had stopped me from killing him, from punishing him for committing the foulest crime of them all.
Murdering one’s mate…
I’d never forget it.
Never forget this night.
It made itself at home alongside a lifetime of other vile memories and would likely surface from time to time in the future.
And I then would remember how it felt to lose control.
How it felt to disappoint her.
“This is your last moment of suffering, Amy,” Hazel murmured as she stroked the soul’s hair from her face and took her gently by the shoulder. “I promise.”
She then reached for me with the hand claspi
ng her scythe, resting the rigid staff along my back.
And in the blink of an eye, we left the nightmare at 786 Clemments Street behind for good.
Anxiety rippled through the pack bond—mostly from Declan, which was nothing out of the ordinary, but also from Gunnar tonight, both of them fearful of my failure. Sighing, I threaded my fingers together, then tossed my head side to side, a noisy, satisfying crack thundering from my neck with each toss. Declan paused his pacing for a moment, his attention on me, face crinkled with worry, then resumed his back-and-forth in front of the manor’s double-doored entrance.
If he went any longer, he’d wear a path into the tile. Gunnar, meanwhile, leaned against the opposite staircase from the one I sat on, still as a statue, that dark blue gaze drifting from the doors to me. Silence hung over the entire house—the whole property, even, the night deathly quiet, the forest still. Hazel had been gone for almost an hour now, and every faint creak of the settling manor sent fire through the bond from all three of us, each expecting our reaper to fly in at any moment.
It was exhausting.
While my pack wore clothes—Declan in a sweater and jeans, Gunnar in more formal trousers and a grey button-up—I sat naked. Dried sweat clung to my skin, and forest earth caked up my calves from the solo walk back. After we had deposited Amy’s soul in Purgatory, Hazel had brought me to the property’s edge, cut clean through the ward, then ordered me in. After closing it behind me, she vanished, no doubt off to deal with my impulsivity on a higher level.
Fuming yet slightly remorseful, I had trudged through the cedars alone, half as a hound, the rest of the way a naked man. Mud coated the soles of my feet and between my toes. The bitter fall chill had settled into my bones, and the battle lust had faded in her absence. A poorer alpha would have kept his failings from his pack, but living in such tight quarters, knowing the bond forming between the others and Hazel, it would get out eventually. Gunnar and Declan had greeted me at the front door, eager as pups for the news.
