Still, it was a poor excuse for shitty behavior.
David jerked his shoulder free and shot up from the chair. “Back the fuck off,” he snarled, letting his temper take the reins. He didn’t enjoy pulling rank, but there were times when a power trip became a necessary evil. “You do not want to travel down this road with me, comrade.”
In truth, he knew Dmitri was more than capable of making good on his threats. Dmitri was taller, stronger, and outweighed David by a good thirty pounds. His former masters had trained him to kill, to torture, to accomplish his missions through any means necessary, and from all accounts he’d been pretty damn good at it. But that didn’t mean David had any intention of backing down, especially in front of his apprentice. He’d rather eat his teeth than his ego.
The two glared at each other for a full minute before Dmitri finally blinked. “What the fuck is up with the schedule?” he demanded, his lips drawn back in a derisive sneer.
From the corner of his eye, David spotted Ruby standing by the jukebox, watching the action with discernible interest. He did a quick scan of the bar, found Martin at the pool table with Rusty. Cal sat at the bar, flirting with a cute little blonde. Every reaper in the Orlando area, all present and accounted for, quite a rarity given their various schedules. And even though they all pretended to be otherwise occupied, their eyes continued to cut back in his direction.
Obviously, Dmitri wasn’t the only one with a bug up his ass about next week’s assignments. He’d probably been elected by the group to express their collective displeasure.
David pulled a five from his wallet and tossed it on the table. “Newbie, why don’t you go help Ruby pick out some music while Dmitri and I discuss a few things?” When Adam shot him a guarded look, he gave a curt nod of assurance. “Just make sure there’s some Stones in the mix.”
Adam snatched the five from the table and stalked off toward the jukebox. He made a point of banging shoulders with Dmitri as he passed.
“Your boy’s got more guts than brains,” Dmitri said as he watched Adam leave. The corner of his mouth tipped up a fraction before his stare cut back to David. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“And you still need to take it down a notch.” David sat back down and picked up his beer. He took a long pull from the glass before motioning toward Adam’s empty chair. “Park it,” he said with an air of authority he reserved for those special occasions when he had to crack the whip.
After a moment’s hesitation, Dmitri settled into the unoccupied seat. He still looked plenty pissed, but at least the vein on his forehead didn’t look like it was about to burst. Still scowling, he leaned forward, bracing his forearms against the edge of the table. He opened his mouth to speak, but then must have thought better of it.
“Sorry about the schedule,” David said once he was satisfied with Dmitri’s attitude adjustment. “I’m just following orders. Big Daddy wants the kid fast-tracked.”
Dmitri arched an inquisitive brow. “Why?”
“How the fuck should I know? My crystal ball isn’t working today.” Not wanting to share his earlier conversation with Samuel, David chose to go on the offensive. He pinned Dmitri with a level glare. “It’s not my place to ask. Not yours, either.”
Dmitri nodded, ceding the point. He picked up the pitcher and filled Adam’s empty mug. “How fast?”
“Two months.”
Dmitri let out a low whistle. “Sucks to be him.”
The last song from the jukebox faded out and the light samba rhythm from “Sympathy for the Devil” took its place. How appropriate.
“Tell me about it.” David raised his glass to salute Adam’s taste in Stones music. “He took his first southbound soul this afternoon.”
The news sparked a rare display of compassion from the big Russian. “I still remember my first one.” His features darkened as he pushed back in his chair, the front legs tipping off the floor. “How’d he handle it?”
“About as well as can be expected.” The waitress stopped by to see if they wanted another pitcher, and David sent her away with a wave of his hand. He topped off his mug and took a long drink. “He’ll adjust, just like everyone else.”
“True, but you might break him in the process.”
Now it was David’s turn to scowl. He’d considered the possibility but discounted the probability. After all, it wasn’t like the kid had much choice but to adapt. “He used to be a cop. He can handle it.”
“I used to kill people for a living, and I’m still not used to it,” Dmitri countered, his dark brows drawn low over troubled eyes. “Watching people die is a shitty way to make a living. And don’t feed me that line of bullshit about it not bothering you. I know better.”
“We all find ways to manage,” David said, his tone mild but his mood growing darker by the second. He didn’t need any reminders about the pros and cons of harvesting souls. The road to redemption was more like an obstacle course, littered with potholes and land mines at every turn.
Bearing witness to Death’s morbid dance was not a task for the faint of heart. Over the years, he’d witnessed every type of brutality imaginable, powerless to intervene no matter how badly he wanted to. You name it, he’d seen it: murder, torture, suicide, car crashes, and a host of atrocities he’d either blocked out or forgotten. And once the soul was harvested, he got the pleasure of experiencing it all over again through the eyes of the recently departed, the despair and desolation surging through his body like a runaway train.
Not every reaper made it to the finish line. Some lost their grip on sanity, while others simply gave up and accepted damnation. The rest found some way of dealing with the stress and strain of the job, be it drugs, sex, violence, or something else outside the boundaries of traditional coping mechanisms.
“Well, I better go.” Dmitri pushed up from his chair. He sucked down the last of his beer and set the empty glass on the table. “I have an eight fifteen down on Division. I’ll explain the situation to the others before I leave.”
David gave him a slight nod. “Thanks. I appreciate it. Wouldn’t want Ruby coming over here and planting one of her heels in my back.”
The remark earned a rare smirk from Dmitri. It was the closest he ever came to an actual smile. He glanced back at the bar, where Ruby had an arm draped around Adam. “Good luck training your puppy. You’re going to need it.”
Five days and nineteen reaps later, Boot Camp for Reapers was exceeding David’s expectations. With the increased repetition, Adam’s skills had improved dramatically. Now the kid could zero in on a pending death like a wolf scenting prey. At this rate, he’d advance to the next level of training in less than a week.
But the price of progress never came cheap. Gaunt and pale, the kid had the haunted look of a soldier who’d seen too much, too soon. He’d stopped shaving and rarely slept. And while Adam never uttered a word of complaint, the deepening shadows around his eyes spoke volumes.
David wasn’t exactly feeling like a million bucks, either. Experiencing so much death in such a condensed time frame took a toll on a man’s psyche. Especially the last one. He shuddered at the memory. Kids were always the hardest to stomach and damn near impossible to forget.
“You did good today, Newbie,” David said, sparing his apprentice a quick glance before he entered the apartment and tossed his keys on the counter.
“Thanks.” There was a hollow sound to Adam’s voice that hadn’t been there a few days before. He crossed the living room, plopped down on the couch, and kicked off his shoes. Buford jumped onto the cushion beside him, his stubby tail wagging with so much enthusiasm his whole body wriggled. For the first time in hours, Adam’s expression warmed to a smile as he scratched the dog behind the ears.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to let the kid keep the stupid mutt, David thought. So what if the mangy fleabag chewed up his favorite pair of Nikes and ate the toilet paper off the roll? As long as the dog helped the kid steer clear of the funny farm, he’d
deal.
One thing was for certain, though. Adam needed a little downtime before he got too crispy around the edges. Good thing tonight’s schedule was a clean slate. It wouldn’t hurt to drag the kid out to the bar and let him pound down a few drinks. Maybe score a little action. Whatever it took to smooth the sting off a long, stressful week.
David was reaching inside the fridge for a bottle of Sam Adams when his cell phone vibrated. Recognizing the number, he let it ring two more times while he twisted off the cap and took a long drag of liquid sunshine.
“What is it, Ruby?” David asked when he answered the phone, not bothering to hide the weariness in his words.
“Hello to you, too, Soldier Boy,” Ruby purred. “Sounds like somebody had a hard day.”
No shit. “More like a hard week.” Beer in hand, he crossed the room and opened the sliding glass door, settling into the chair closest to the railing. “What do you want?”
“What makes you think I want something?”
David let the silence stretch out a few beats. How many years had they played this game? Thirty? Thirty-five? It used to be fun, but now it just annoyed him. Then again, almost everything irritated him nowadays. “You never call unless you want something, so you might as well spit it out.”
“You were always one to cut to the chase,” Ruby said on the heels of a husky laugh. “It would do you good to loosen up a little. You’re a lot more fun that way.”
“I’ll take it into consideration.”
“You do that,” Ruby said, her Southern accent stretching out every word. “Listen, me and the boys were wondering if Adam could come out and play tonight. I’d ask you to come along, but we both already know what your answer’s going to be.”
True, but at least he earned high marks for consistency. He’d never been much of a social butterfly, preferring a little quiet time to decompress after a long day.
“You’re working the poor boy to death,” Ruby continued. “He’s not a machine like you. You’ve got to give him a little breather before he burns out.”
He wasn’t about to argue the point. Still, he didn’t want Ruby turning the kid inside out with her own special brand of stress management.
David leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on the railing. The air had begun to cool with the setting sun, bringing down the humidity and making the temperatures bearable for the first time in over a week. A familiar red Mazda swung into one of the empty parking spots and his interest perked when he recognized the person behind the wheel.
The driver’s door opened and Sarah stepped out, her arms loaded with books and bags. She closed the door with a swing of her hips and headed toward the building.
“Okay, you win,” David told Ruby as he walked back inside, closing the sliding glass door behind him. The woman had a point. Adam could use a night off. Plus, it would give him the chance to go next door and thank Sarah for her help last week when he got himself blown up. The kid had been nagging him about it for days. “Let me go ask Adam.”
He found Adam still sacked out on the couch, his bare feet resting on the coffee table. The TV remote was in one hand, and he scratched the dog’s belly with the other.
“Hey Newbie, do you—”
“Yes,” Adam said before David finished his sentence.
Sneaky little bastard had it all planned out ahead of time, David thought with a strange sense of approval. He ought to be pissed, but he had to give his crew credit for getting their ducks in a row. “Well then, I guess it’s settled.”
Ruby’s voice teemed with satisfaction. “Wonderful. We’ll pick him up in twenty minutes.”
“Just make sure you bring him back in one piece.”
He could almost hear the smile in her voice. “As you wish.”
David knocked on Sarah’s door about an hour later, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. No answer. His gaze darted down to the lot, saw the little red Mazda still parked by the mailboxes.
Maybe she was in the shower. Maybe she had a hot date tonight and didn’t want to be bothered. Maybe he should just leave a note on the door—
“Well hello there, stranger,” Sarah said when she opened the door. She’d ditched the work clothes, looking much more relaxed in a pair of denim shorts and a tight fitting Miami Dolphins T-shirt. Her dark brown hair hung loose about her shoulders and her feet were bare, showing off a set of brightly polished pink toenails. When she looked into his eyes, a smile lit her face and put a lump in his throat. “Long time no see. I figured you were either dead or avoiding me.”
“Now that hurts. I’d never avoid you.” David smiled, hoping a little charm would cover the fact he was lying through his teeth. “Work’s been keeping me pretty busy.”
“I can relate.” Sarah reached out and gripped his right arm before he even realized what she was doing. “So how are those cuts healing?”
His first impulse was to pull his arm away, but he forced himself to play nice and let her search for injuries that had long since healed. Might as well get it over with, he thought with a grim sense of resignation. After dodging her for the better part of a week, he doubted she’d let him off the hook without a thorough examination.
“They’re fine,” he told her, acutely aware of the warmth of her fingers as they trailed over his arm.
When she glanced up, he met her gaze and sent out a mental suggestion. Everything’s fine. No need to keep looking. It failed to work, which threw him for a loop. Throughout the week, he’d tested his ability to influence the mortal mind. So far, he hadn’t run into any glitches.
Until her.
Why couldn’t he manipulate her thoughts? For the life of him, he couldn’t figure it out.
“How about the lacerations on your torso? Some of those looked pretty nasty.” She let go of his arm and pushed up the hem of his T-shirt. Her brows wrinkled when she found no lingering signs of injury. “I’ll be damned,” she muttered under her breath. “Unbelievable. You’re an incredibly fast healer.”
“I told you I’d be fine after a good night’s sleep.”
Sarah’s mouth curved up on one side, her expression somewhere between skeptical and amused. “So you told me.”
Her fingers trailed lightly across his stomach, and for a few seconds David forgot how to breathe. Closing his eyes, he focused on the warmth of her fingers, the exhilarating sensation of flesh against flesh, wishing she’d press a little harder, a little lower.
“How’d you get these?” she asked, breaking his train of thought. Her hand paused over the trio of faint circular scars on his lower abdomen, just above the beltline. “I didn’t notice them the other day.”
Probably because she’d been too busy picking shrapnel out of his skin and trying to badger him into a trip to the emergency room. “Oh, I got those a lifetime ago,” David replied, putting a casual spin on the words. He gently pulled her hand away and tugged down his shirt before she caught sight of the bayonet scar near his left pectoral muscle. He’d earned those marks on a frozen battlefield half a world away, moments before he drew his last mortal breath; an unpleasant reminder of how his latest incarnation began.
“I wanted to thank you for taking care of me the other night,” David said, switching the topic to one less tricky. Another couple minutes of small talk, and he could retreat to the solitude of his apartment. “I really appreciate everything you did for me.”
“No problem. It’s what neighbors do, right?” Sarah shrugged, and then her gaze tracked back to the stove, where a large pot of water bubbled at a full boil. “I was just putting dinner on. Have you eaten yet?”
He was about to say yes when his stomach betrayed him with an audible growl.
Sarah arched a brow. “I’ll take that as a no.”
Another growl, cutting off any chances of bullshitting his way back to his apartment. “Guilty as charged.”
“Well then, it’s settled. Come on in and make yourself comfortable. I hope you like pasta.” Before he had the chance to come u
p with a decent excuse, she turned on her heel and moved to the kitchen. She tore open a package of rigatoni and emptied the entire box into the boiling water. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty for two. Or should I say three? There’s enough for Adam if you want to go get him.”
“Adam’s out with some friends tonight.” David stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind him. “Besides, it looks like you’re making enough to feed a small army.”
“Keep talking like that and I’ll send you home hungry.” Turning her attention back to the stove, she stirred the pasta until it reached a boil, then lowered the temperature on the burner and set a lid on the pot. “I work a lot of hours at the lab, so when I cook I usually make a big batch and freeze the leftovers for later.”
“Makes sense.” It had been months—no wait, years—since he’d bothered cooking a meal. Usually, he just ordered something from the deli or had a pizza delivered. The spicy scent of marinara sauce wafted over, and his stomach gurgled its appreciation. “So you work in a lab? What kind of work do you do there?”
“I specialize in biomedical research.” Wariness creased her brow. “You don’t have a problem with animal testing, do you?”
David shook his head. Judging by the defensive body language, he was treading on a touchy subject. “No. I have to admit I’m not very familiar with it, but I assume it has its purpose.”
She let out a breath as a look of relief crossed her face. “Good.”
He watched while she opened the cabinet by the refrigerator, her trim body stretching to reach the glasses on the top shelf. Toned arms, nice legs, and damn if he couldn’t help but appreciate the way the denim rode up her cute little ass. “I could have helped with the glasses, you know.”
Grave Intentions Page 8
