Scythe

by M K Mancos

“Yeah. Well.” He had the decency to look chagrined. “I got to thinking about what happened in the park and what almost happened here this morning and I felt like a shitbag for leaving you like I did.” Their gazes met. His had gone all warm, like molten gold. “I might not understand or be ready to accept this story of yours, but I’m willing to believe there’s something off the charts going on here.”

  “You don’t know how off the charts.”

  Keely took his hand and dragged him to the sofa. She was exhausted. There wasn’t any other word for it. Bone and muscle had dissolved into a rubbery state. She folded more than sat on the cushions.

  “What are you going to do about fixing my door? I assume you kicked it in when I didn’t answer your knock.”

  “I’ll pay to have a new one installed.” He hadn’t taken a seat beside her, but stood gazing down at her. “For now, I want you to get some things together and come stay with me.”

  “This is really going to make the next few days difficult for me, you know?” She stood again and went to do the sensible thing. Though she worried someone would take off with her meager possessions. There was no reason to argue. Clearly there was no way she could remain in her place with her door only a memory.

  As she walked into the bedroom, she pulled out her cell phone to call Nico to have him nail a board across the door. He was the landlord, after all.

  24

  Josiah watched Keely fasten the black leather driving gloves on her hands. Something about seeing her don such rugged gear shot fear and desire through him. She looked as if she were arming up for battle Rambo-style.

  Pugsley stood at her feet, looking up at her with a worried expression. Josiah reached down and patted the dog’s head. “It’s all right, boy. I think she’s done this a few times before.”

  “A few times,” Keely mumbled then glanced up. “I wish I didn’t have to do it at all. But when the Big Man says you Scythe, you Scythe. No matter how much you want to get out of it. I feel like Michael Corleone in Godfather III. They keep pulling me back in.”

  “You still haven’t told me exactly what it is you do with those scrolls once you get them.”

  “Work them in order of TOD and sever the cord that holds soul to body. That’s all there is to it.” Keely fastened the utility belt around her waist.

  “Are we ready to begin?” Samson came from down the hall as if walking out of the bedroom.

  Josiah did a double take. “Where did you come from?”

  An evil grin curled Samson’s lip up at the corner. “You know the monsters in the closet your parents tell you to avoid when you’re a child?”

  Josiah nodded.

  “They aren’t monsters.”

  Josiah blinked a few times as he processed the information. He pulled on his long, black trench coat over a pair of dark jeans and shirt. If he was running with the Grim Reapers, he better blend.

  “Not Reapers,” Samson corrected. “Scythes.”

  Did the guy read minds, too?

  “What’s the difference?” Josiah opened the door allowing them to pass out into the night ahead of him. Pugsley trotted over. “Oh, no you don’t. You have to stay here and hold down the fort.”

  Pugsley turned his head to the side, looking up at Samson with woeful eyes.

  “He’s afraid to stay home alone.” Samson snapped his fingers a few times and Pugsley went to stand by his side. “He promises not to interfere.”

  Josiah glanced down at the dog. “How can you be afraid? You’re supposed to be a watchdog.”

  Pugsley looked behind him into the living room then back at Josiah.

  “All right, but pay attention to Samson and Keely. We’re just observing.”

  Pugsley’s stubby tail began to wag happily as if he understood every word exchanged. Sometimes he wondered if the dog did speak English.

  They left Josiah’s house heading south on Mulberry to State, walking instead of using a car. He hadn’t asked why they walked the town like a band of roving trick or treaters.

  Keely pulled her phone out and tapped the screen a few times. “Our first client is on Brenkenridge Place.” She wiggled the phone at Samson. “Now, this is working. It’s much easier doing it this way than using that unruly scroll.”

  “He loved the idea of downloading. All Reapers and Scythes are getting handhelds now.” Samson tapped on a belt holder concealed in the folds of his robe.

  “Technology is a wonderful thing.” Keely turned onto Brenkenridge and hurried up the walk of a small cape-style house. She stood on the porch, looking in the window. “I hope she doesn’t have the doors locked. I hate when they do that.”

  Samson held his hand palm out. Light swirled around the hardware as a sharp click sounded. “It’s open now.”

  “You know, Samson, if they give us the name and all other vital information, they should also be able to notify us if there is anyone else present when we arrive on scene. It would be very helpful to know ahead of time what we’re walking into.” Keely pulled the door open and stuck her head in.

  Samson waited for Josiah to enter before bringing up the rear. He made a motion for Pugsley to stay on the porch. The dog obeyed without protest.

  The first thing Josiah noticed was the unnatural quiet of the room. Their client was already gone. Years of being a homicide detective had conditioned him to know when he stood in the presence of death.

  An elderly woman had fallen behind a wingback chair. Her slipper-clad feet stuck out, visible from the doorway.

  How sad to die alone. No one should spend their last few moments of life listening to Pat Sajak encouraging people to solve puzzles.

  As Keely moved toward the body, Josiah’s attention fixed on the television playing the game show with the sound turned all the way down. Now why would an elderly woman, who was probably at least somewhat hard of hearing, turn the sound off to watch? There wasn’t a Closed-caption running across the bottom of the screen. It all looked so suspicious.

  “I need some specimen bags.”

  “For what?” Keely gave him a look over her shoulder as she dug into her utility belt.

  “In case this is a crime scene.”

  From his periphery, a shimmering wisp floated up, disappearing into the ceiling as if it passed through. It was the same thing he’d seen on the video of Keely at Humberto Rubens’ shooting.

  Holy Christ, it was real!

  He’d hoped that he’d been wrong. That the last twenty-four hours had been all a weird dream he’d not woken up from. That Keely would still find a way to explain away the apparition from the night before—but the explanation she’d given him sitting at her kitchen table was the truth.

  Okay, pretend you’re in a Sandman comic.

  “Let’s go,” Keely placed the sickle back in her pouch and started out of the room.

  “That’s it? You’re going to leave her here alone?” Josiah was appalled at the indifference.

  Keely cupped his shoulder in her hand. “I asked that same question when I started this. There are already people in place who are supposed to find her. It’s all prearranged.”

  “Who?” Josiah didn’t know why it was important to him that he knew the identity of the person who found her or when. It just was.

  “We aren’t given that information.” She squeezed him. “I never claimed this was easy. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been asked to do. That man in the alley that night, he was my very first client. I begged Samson to let me call the paramedics to save him, but that wasn’t the man’s destiny. It was his time and who are we to argue with God?”

  Josiah wiped a hand over his mouth. No wonder she was torn up and defensive. Her tender heart and love for humanity made her a poor choice to stand by helplessly as the Reapers did their duty and took the living into the next plane of existence.

  No wonder she hadn’t been able to tell him the truth.

  Their next client was in the farthest room of a seedy motel off the jug handle onto the county road. Death hung i
n the air thicker than the greasy film of neglect over the skanky furnishings.

  They hadn’t just walked into a death, it was another murder scene. This one a dead prostitute whose revealing dress had been shoved up over her thighs. Not only a murder, but a sexual assault as well, if he guessed correctly.

  Josiah took his phone out and dialed.

  Samson ripped it from his hand. “We do not contact the authorities.”

  “This one is a murder scene and I’m taking charge.” Josiah grabbed the phone back.

  As he dialed the station, the line when dead. He looked at the phone. The battery was dead. That was impossible. He always kept it charged if he wasn’t wearing it.

  He glanced up at Samson, who had his brow raised. “I am in charge. Always. In your own words, you are here to observe. I will not remind you again.”

  “Precious time is being lost,” Josiah argued.

  “She’ll be found by whoever is supposed to find her. Keely explained this to you.”

  Josiah watched Keely sever the cord and turn around to face him. “We’re out of here.”

  When he started to protest, she held up her hand. “We’ll discuss it all later.”

  He followed them all over Water Point Station, watching as they found people who had already succumbed to death and Keely cut the cord that kept their souls grounded. It was after midnight when they returned to his house. He’d never been so tired, both mentally and physically. His spiritual side had taken a severe beating.

  He fell into his recliner and hunched over, resting his forearms on his knees. Pugsley came over and licked at his hand, instinctually giving comfort as only a canine could do. He rubbed the dog’s head.

  “You should have at least warned me of the rules before we went out tonight.” The comment was directed at both Keely and Samson, who sat across from him on the sofa.

  “Would that have changed your mind about going? Because I don’t think it would have. You’re a stubborn man, Josiah Adler, and the only way you would have not gone would be if someone had tied you to a chair. And even then you would have dragged the chair behind you.” She already pegged him. Knew him better than he knew himself.

  “How can you stomach it?” he asked, at a total loss.

  “Who said I could?” She held out her hand for Pugsley as he went sniffing his way over to her. “There are so many things about being a Scythe that bother me deeply, but I’ve also seen the alternative and I like that even less.”

  He was almost afraid to ask. But it didn’t stop him. “And what is the alternative?”

  “What happened to the park jogger—that’s the alternative.” Keely met his eyes. Hers were harder than he’d ever seen them. “The Reaper from this morning works for an outfit called Death, Inc. They are taking clients away from heaven and severing the soul cords, rendering them useless.”

  “Why?” he asked, the detective in him piqued.

  “What?” Keely looked as if she didn’t understand such a basic question.

  “Why would this Death, Inc. want to steal souls or make them useless? What do they get out of the bargain? There has to be a motive for the crime or it’s pointless.”

  Keely and Samson exchanged looks.

  “They do it because they can. They want to keep them from reincarnating or going onto the next plane of existence.” Samson definitely toed the company line.

  Josiah shook his head, not buying it for a moment. “Let’s try this line of questioning then. Where did they come from?”

  “They broke from heaven and started their own business,” Keely said with a frown.

  “All right, but again, why?” Warming to the disturbing conversation, Josiah stood. He smelled a crime ring, even if it was being carried out in the shades between life and death.

  “To make heaven look bad? To make humans suffer? To do-in people before their time?” Keely threw out the guesses like rubber balls, letting them bounce around the room.

  “Not likely.” He pinned Samson with a look that had the power to instill fear in people. “What can they gain by killing people not slated to die yet?”

  “The ultimate prize is the stolen soul. If they sever the cord, they control the soul.”

  Keely turned to hit Samson on the arm. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “You weren’t authorized to know. And I’m not involved in the recovery of the souls. For all our tracking, we still do not know where they’re being kept.”

  Keely pushed to her feet. “We have to find them.”

  Josiah didn’t know how the thunderbolt hit him or why it picked that particular moment to do so. But at that moment, he fell completely and totally in love with Keely R. Montgomery.

  He swallowed the realization and jumped into the spiritual quagmire of her life as a Scythe. “I’m in.”

  Samson shook his head for a moment before throwing his hands in the air. “You’ll need a contact on the other side.”

  Keely whooped and threw her arms around her boss, then came to Josiah for a long, lingering kiss.

  He didn’t know when Samson left, but he was glad the dude could take a hint.

  25

  Shelia kicked Josiah’s chair with her chunky-heeled boots. “You sleeping on the job, Josie?”

  “No, I’m counting the veins on the inside of my eyelids.” He rubbed his eyes.

  The late nights with Keely were getting to him. Samson had been cut loose as her preceptor, due to the need for extra manpower. Josiah had been unable to let her go out to fulfill her duties on her own. Just the thought of her running from one end of Water Point Station to the other with those Death, Inc. characters hunting her scared the shit out of him. Even if she did look way competent with that golden sickle.

  “Here, look these over.” Shelia threw fiber analysis reports down on his desk.

  He rifled through page after page of completely identical analyses, all from different crime scenes. All of them familiar.

  Excitement bubbled up. “Hot damn.”

  “Our boy is getting sloppy.”

  “Our boy is getting arrested tonight.” Josiah stood and pulled his jacket off the back of his chair. They finally had something concrete linking Midnight to a whole lot of crime scenes.

  “But wait. There’s more.” She handed him the other file she’d been holding close to her chest. “We have DNA linking him to the Trinity Park jogger.”

  “Then why are we still standing here? Let’s get the warrant and get going.”

  “It’s not quite that easy.” Shelia handed him another file. “According to this, our boy died about six months ago.”

  “You’re screwing with me.”

  He took the file and glanced over the contents. Everything appeared in order, including the death certificate. “This has to be a different Thomas Egan.”

  “With the same date of birth?”

  “Dead men don’t leave DNA behind at recent crime scenes.” At least he didn’t think they did. After this past week, he’d be willing to reverse that assumption.

  “Could the dead man have been a case of mistaken identity?” Shelia suggested as they headed from the detectives’ room into the lobby.

  “Either that or our boy assumed a dead man’s identity.” That sounded more likely. “Easy enough to do with the right computer skills. Besides, call me politically incorrect, but all those Goths look the exact same to me.”

  Shelia gave a dry chuckle. “All right, so we’re going to go on the theory that either the body buried in Thomas Egan’s grave isn’t Thomas Egan, or Midnight isn’t really Thomas Egan.”

  “And Marianne isn’t Marianne anymore because she’s Ginger,” Josiah mumbled an old line from Gilligan’s Island. “Let’s call in the team and shift some assignments around. We need to figure out which of these scenarios is the one that fits. Me, I’m going with the stolen identity. Seems like our boy.”

  “All the evidence we have on Midnight is more recent than six months. We need to dig back further in his history.
” Shelia took out her cell phone. “I’ll get Cogland on that.”

  “Good thinking.” Josiah patted his suit jacket down, looking for a cigarette. At times like these—when they were close to cracking a case—he missed them the most.

  While they waited for the team to assemble, Josiah called his friends on the NYPD and those in surrounding areas to see if they had any tips on Midnight’s whereabouts. So far, the little conman hadn’t surfaced since he pulled the Houdini in the park. If they lost him to the sprawling environs of the tri-state area, they’d never find him.

  His friend, NYPD detective Colin deMarco, picked up the phone on the second ring.

  “Josie,” his deep voice rumbled from the other end of the phone. “What’cha know?”

  “Well, I know my main suspect in the Trinity Park jogger case has been dead for the past six months.” He pushed out the glass door, heading across the parking lot to his department car.

  “I hate when that happens,” Colin said. Something crinkled in the background then a loud crunching sounded. Josiah had apparently interrupted Colin’s lunch.

  “They haven’t tracked him through the city?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. But you never know. I’ll give one of my buddies who works the 9th a call and see if they’ve spotted him.” There was a pause then, “I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. If this guy’s skipped, he’s long gone.”

  And yet the guy seemed to stick to Keely like he had been magnetized to her.

  A thought so horrible it drained all the blood from his face struck like lightning. He dug his keys out of his pocket with his free hand.

  “Let me know if you hear anything, Colin. I have to call my girlfriend and check on her.”

  Colin gave a knowing laugh. “Later, then.”

  He hit Keely’s number in his address book and waited for it to ring. Her voice mail picked up. God, he hated her voice mail. Why did she even have a freakin’ cell phone if she never had the stupid thing on?

  “Sweetheart, it’s Josiah. Call me on my cell. ASAP.”

  He hurried to his car. He’d let Shelia get the team together; he had to find Keely. It seemed to be a recurring theme in his life lately.