Reaper's Pack (All the Queen's Men Book 1)

by Rhea Watson

  “You did know,” my beta growled. “You said it… We shouldn’t have assumed someone had taken him out.”

  Declan shifted onto two legs at our side, his fear palpable but his presence strong. Focused. Unlike the time before Hazel, fear seemed to center his mind rather than send him spiraling into a panic.

  “We couldn’t have known,” he muttered, swiping his hands through his hair. “This wasn’t here before. I swear, I didn’t scent it—”

  “He set a trap,” I told them, toeing at the spot where I’d first seen that horrible orange cage shoot up from the earth. “As soon as she walked into it, she sprung it. This was planned. He was waiting for us.”

  Rage made every word labored, so furious with myself, with him, that I could barely see straight, never mind trying to think my way through this.

  We were alone.

  Someone had taken our reaper, our mate, and we were unmonitored for the first time in our very long lives…

  Never before had the pack been left to ourselves outside of a cage.

  I glanced up and down the empty street, jaw clenched when a car ambled by on the road running perpendicular to this one.

  “Her scythe…” Declan uttered the discovery like it pained him, and I watched him sprint over to the boxy grey warehouse to the left of the road. He slowed as he approached the locked garage door. Sure enough, there was Hazel’s scythe—just sitting there, useless, so far from its partner, from its fated mate. Did it feel the same sting of loneliness and loss that we did?

  “Don’t touch it, Dec,” Gunnar called, halfheartedly trailing after his packmate, stopping at the concrete curb, arms limp at his side. The look he shot back to me said more than words ever could, but I felt it. For a hellhound who usually had all the answers, he hadn’t a clue where to go from here.

  Neither did I.

  A month ago, I would have ordered us to run. Teleport out of Lunadell—go north, into the wilds, find an abandoned wolf or bear den. Settle in for the winter. Hide our tracks. Regroup. Head somewhere new come spring…

  Now, just the thought of leaving this street gave me fucking heartburn, fiery pain searing up from my gut, burning my throat, my chest.

  I had felt her panic. I’d never really felt Hazel before, but since we had mated, I—and the others—had experienced flashes of her emotions, her physical sensations. Given we’d spent the last week fucking, really cementing our bond, it had mostly been her pleasure. But today, I felt her panic, her fear.

  And I’d come running.

  But not fast enough.

  Just fast enough to watch her fall.

  All my rage pounding through our pack bond was aimed squarely at myself, for my failing, but that wasn’t productive. If I sat stewing, nothing would get done.

  “Gunnar.” I motioned to the bloody sigil smeared across the road. “Guard the portal. He may come back for whatever reason.”

  My beta hopped to without hesitation, stalking toward the portal like he wanted to murder it.

  “Declan,” I called, directing our attention to the base of the garage door, to the most powerful weapon just sitting there. “Guard her scythe. No one can touch it, but someone might try.”

  My packmate crouched over it, not touching it, but close enough to bite an intruder’s fingers clean off if they tried to get around him. A furious concentration knitted his brows—almost made him look intimidating. Amidst all the other emotion storming through my insides, a wisp of pride shone bright; I always knew he had it in him.

  Strength.

  Declan was stronger than anyone had ever thought; he had just needed the chance to prove himself.

  Well, the time was now—for all of us.

  “And what will you do?” Gunnar asked, planted squarely in the middle of the portal. I had no doubt that should it open, he would plunge headfirst into the darkness to find her.

  “I…” What would I do? Shaking my head, I looked to the west, to the coastal territory of the other Lunadell hellhound pack. “I’m going to fetch that reaper.”

  “Alexander?”

  “Yes, perhaps he can…” Everything inside me knotted at the thought of asking for help with this. “Perhaps he can do something we can’t.”

  Disgust ripened in the pack bond. Each one of us loathed the idea of someone else, particularly another male, stepping in to rescue Hazel. After all, what sort of hellhound pack couldn’t protect their own mate? Pathetic. Relying on another? Pathetic.

  But what choice did we have? If this was blood magic and he wasn’t the demon Heaven insisted he was, then this might be way out of our realm of understanding. Alexander was a pompous prick, probably the kind of reaper to shove a hellhound’s face into its own shit just to prove a point, but right now, he was our only option.

  I turned away from the pack, seconds from teleporting, when agony sliced through my body. Up my midback, to the right. Like a blow to the kidney, painful beyond anything I’d ever felt.

  As I collapsed to my knees, wheezing, clutching at the would-be wound, I knew in my heart that that pain was hers.

  “Knox!”

  Gunnar shot to my side, and when I peeled my hand away from what should have been a gaping wound, we found my usual tanned flesh—unmarked, uncut, unharmed.

  The fucker was torturing her.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Declan jogging in our direction, only to stop at the edge of the road. I waved him off, my order one that needn’t be said: stay with the scythe. Still, his concern rippled through our bond, and I could all but hear his hellhound form’s low whine at my distress.

  “It’s fine,” I rasped, my breath slowly coming back, the pain ebbing—but barely. “I’m fine.”

  “She isn’t,” Gunnar muttered. His hands skimmed along my forearm, like he was about to help me up, but he retreated at my low growl, leaving me to stand on my own. My beta rose swiftly and looked me dead in the eye. “The pain was Hazel’s… I felt it too—a little, anyway.”

  I had been literally sliced open before, cut up and cut open for the amusement of demons; this agony had felt like someone had taken a blade and shoved it in as deep as possible, then twisted, just to make sure their victim was down.

  To make sure Hazel stayed down.

  Rage threatened to cloud my vision, but I blinked hard, trying to focus on the task at hand and not the fantasy of ripping that cut-up fuck into little pieces with my bare hands.

  “Stay here until I return,” I snarled, the shift already upon me. Gunnar clapped my shoulder, a brother in arms to the very end, and stepped back.

  “Hurry, Knox.”

  Nodding, I dropped from two legs to four, claws hungry for that bastard’s innards. Hazel had told me where Alexander and his pack lived, and we had scented them out every time she took us into Lunadell. Teleporting to the property line would be a breeze.

  Convincing him to help us find her, hopefully, would be just as simple.

  If not, a certain reaper would taste my wrath long before the fucker who took her.

  Eyes closed, I vanished from the scene of the crime, every second precious.

  Praying, for the first time in my life, that we weren’t too late.

  28

  Hazel

  I came to with that sickening sense of waking up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room—the kind where your heart lurches and your mind races the second you regain consciousness.

  Groaning softly, I stirred but struggled to lift my eyelids. They had never felt so heavy before, not even after a night of drinking and very, very little sleep.

  But even without looking, the rest of my senses confirmed at least a few things.

  I was sitting upright, my head drooped to my chest, the strain in my neck and back suggesting it had been hanging for some time.

  My wrists and feet were bound to the chair with something cold and cutting—barbed wire, maybe?

  And I was… groggy?

  Yep.

  For the first time in my afterlife,
I was groggy. Disoriented.

  As a reaper, I’d felt invincible for the last ten years, but as I threw my head back, wincing at the thud when it smacked into the chair’s solid wooden back, I made another frustrating realization.

  My invincibility was a product of the weapon I wielded, gifted to me by Death—and the fact that I spent all my time with human souls. Frightened human souls at that. Sure, the odd demon crossed my path, but for the most part they were bound to Lucifer’s laws. Angels bound to Heaven’s decrees.

  Reapers were neutral territory. We were fucking Switzerland in the war between Heaven and Hell.

  The rest of the supernatural world had stayed off my radar…

  Until a carved-up psycho trapped me in a cage, dragged me through a portal, and stabbed me in the back with something that hurt worse than death. I shifted in place, my butt asleep, and grimaced at the flash of pain in the middle of my back, just off to the right.

  He must have drugged me.

  I sucked in a deep breath, damp earth flooding up my nostrils, accented by a cold metallic bite reminiscent of wet rocks. Finally—finally—I forced my eyelids up. They slid back down on their own accord, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time battling with them.

  My eventual victory came with a depressing view.

  Bound, like I’d suspected, to a high-backed chair at the head of a long stone table, I found myself in a cave of sorts—or, at the very least, deep underground. Slate grey surrounded me from every side: floor, walls, ceiling. Shadows collected in the corners, the surrounding cavernous space black enough that I’d have been screwed if I couldn’t see in the dark. Candles flickered across the table, and an eerie glow cast everything nearby in a nauseating orange. With some difficulty, I tipped my head up—and found a skull-encrusted chandelier hanging over the table.

  Great.

  Just perfect.

  Psychotic and disgustingly dramatic, my captor.

  As I tried to lubricate my too-dry mouth, my sandpapery throat, I saw to my wrists. Simple twine coiled around each, binding me to the chair’s armrests, but any movement felt like razor blades slicing through my flesh. I bit back a whimper as a thin stream of gold erupted from beneath the tawny thread, and I stilled with a stuttering breath, not in the mood to test if this rope could carve through a reaper’s bones too.

  Refusing to just sit here and wait for whatever rubbish that bastard had up his sleeve, I resorted to magic. However, like in the cage, nothing happened. A pulse of energy had the skull chandelier above rustling a little, and as I glowered up at it, I realized why I couldn’t get a foothold, magically speaking: sigils. Dozens of them carved into the ceiling, all sorts of ancient warding and protection symbols etched deep into the stone. A few I recognized, but most were foreign to me. Based on my inability to perform, I assumed there was at least one to muffle my magic—or any magic outside of the carver’s brand.

  Fantastic.

  This day just kept getting better.

  Footsteps clicked primly behind me, and I straightened, each soft tip-tap like thunder. They moved slowly, purposefully, in no hurry to greet me at this twisted banquet table. Heavy too, the gravitas palpable. The air around me thickened with power, and it didn’t surprise me one bit to find it wasn’t the fucker in his meticulous, albeit frayed, grey suit, his slicked black hair—but a much larger figure in reaper’s robes, the hood drawn, its back to me as it strode leisurely down the length of the table. I swallowed hard, ignoring the weight of its presence…

  And the scent of violent death suddenly permeating the room.

  It sat gracefully at the other end of the luxurious stone table, the dancing candlelight stilling to perfectly straight peaks of light in its presence. Slowly, the figure lifted skeletally thin hands to its hood and peeled it back.

  My hands clutched at the armrests as I battled with my lingering brain fog. This being may have donned a reaper’s garb, but he wasn’t one of Death’s servants—not from the look of him. Cheeks so sunken they peeled open to bone and sinew. Blazing yellow eyes that stared unflinchingly back at me. No eyebrows, no eyelashes. Thin lips. Thin skin too, translucent and stretched over his skull.

  Like a corpse—only he radiated power, control.

  Magic, even.

  No doubt the artist behind all those symbols.

  “Hello, Hazel.” A rough, grating voice skittered across the table, and suddenly the fiery tips of the candles moved again—frantically, like even fire wanted to get away from him.

  “I don’t know you,” I said flatly, peering down my nose at him—refusing to let an ounce of fear show, “but you seem to know me. Hardly fair, is it?”

  The creature chuckled, the sound making the hairs on the back of my neck rise, every gut instinct in me screaming run.

  “And why is that not fair?” he rasped.

  “I appear to be the guest of honor,” I remarked, each word clipped, annoyed, like this was just one big bother. “I’m seated at the head of the table, after all. Surely you owe me the courtesy of your name—and the reason for my being here.”

  And maybe an explanation for why I was tied up in unbreakable twine, a binding that continued to grate into my wrists. Gold rivets dribbled over the armrest, and my heart skipped a beat at the first dull plop of a droplet hitting the stone floor.

  My captor settled into his own high-backed chair, elbows on the armrests, fingers steepled together. His thin mouth twisted up and to the left, those yellow eyes never once leaving my face. Hard to read, a face that looked like faded silk stretched over bone, but something told me that if I made a wrong move—pissed him off—I’d know it. Instantly.

  “The humans knew me once as the Ferryman,” he drawled. “They left coins in the mouths of their corpses to pay for passage through the beyond.”

  The Ferryman?

  I bit the insides of my cheeks, the fog finally lifted, my mind racing through all manner of supernatural entities who might fit the bill. Not a demon, then. Certainly not an angel. Not a shifter, not one of the fair folk. Not beautiful enough to be an elf, not humanoid enough to pass as a phoenix.

  Ferryman.

  Coins.

  Passage to the beyond—

  “Charon?”

  Those yellow orbs practically shimmered in response.

  A god, then.

  One of the ancients.

  Awesome.

  One of the few species to rival angels, gods were so hit-or-miss when it came to their power.

  But clearly this guy was packing.

  Damn it.

  From my vague recollection of Charon, he served the Greek god Hades, and like me, transported souls into the afterlife. Unlike me, the souls found him on the shores of the rivers Styx and Acheron; with the coins placed upon their bodies in death, the proper burial rite of the time, humans had once paid for passage in the Underworld.

  “Yes,” the god murmured, gently touching his steepled fingers to his lips, “Charon. So seldom uttered in this age…”

  “What do you…?” I shook my head. While his identity was now clear, the rest of it was still a tangled mess. Why me? “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s all right, dearie,” he crooned, straightening at the sound of new footsteps echoing from the dark depths behind me. “You will—momentarily.”

  The footfalls came faster, a lesser stride, shorter legs, and were accompanied by a very distinct feminine whimper. I tried to look around the chair’s back but couldn’t quite get the right angle.

  And then he stepped into the light—my kidnapper, my bloody shadow. Still in the same grey suit, he strode forth with his once pristine black hair slightly ruffled…

  A soul on his arm.

  My eyebrows knitted, confusion and fear twisting together inside me.

  She was young, the soul, no more than sixteen or seventeen. Lovely but withered, she shuffled along at the man’s side, and I noted fresh carvings across his pale flesh. Red painted his face. Black ringed his eyes. Not a demon. Definitel
y not.

  Mouth hanging open, struggling to make sense of the situation, I watched on expecting the bastard to seat the soul in one of the table’s empty chairs. Instead, he escorted her down to Charon, who wrapped his spidery fingers around her hand and gently guided her onward. He arranged her expertly, silently, so that she sat directly in front of him on the table, her aura shivering. The soul cast a tentative look back at me, her maroon curls spilling down her back, her periwinkle-blue hospital gown missing its bottoms.

  Charon then stood swiftly, towering over the seated soul with what he probably thought was a serene smile, but any stretch of that mouth read as predatory—he could never look sweet, never lull anyone with his handsomeness. His yellow gaze flicked to me as his hands started to explore her, meticulously mapping the curve of her shoulders, the lines of her waist, right down to her knees, her calves, her feet.

  There was something so overtly sexual about it that I felt bile clawing up my throat.

  “Stop,” I growled. The soul trembled with fear, whereas I shook with rage. “Stop this, Charon.”

  “Oh, simmer down, reaper,” the god murmured, sweeping the soul’s hair so that it all gathered over one shoulder, exposing her thin neck, her bony shoulders. He walked his fingertips slowly along the curve there with a reverent sigh. “She’s here for me… just like you.”

  And before I could get another word in, he tore into her. Literally. His mouth slammed to her neck; his spindly fingers pierced her gut. Screams filled the cavernous space, bouncing off rock and slate, a choral verse from me and the soul.

  “Stop!” I screeched, fighting my restraints with every bit of strength I had left. Tears may have blurred my vision, but not enough to skew what he did to her. Charon tore flesh from bone, ripped chunks of hair from her scalp. He consumed her viciously, like he alone was a pack of lions feasting on a fallen gazelle.

  Only this gazelle endured every brutal second of it, wailing, begging, screaming for mercy—until he plucked out her tongue, ripped out her throat. When she fell silent, I screamed louder, my throat shredded, my wrists sliced down to bone as I fought my shackles.