Dead Reaper Walking

by Mina Carter

  “Regan. It’s Andrews.” The sergeant’s deep voice filled his ear. “Just got a report of screaming at the Barnett place. Might be nothing, but you want to check it out?”

  Troy closed his eyes, and rested his head back against the seat. The Barnett place. Home of the battiest pair of old women anyone had ever met. Every cop in Oakland knew about the Barnett sisters. There wasn’t a week that went by without the department getting a call out to the place. Cat up the tree. Intruders in the house that turned out to be their own reflections in the mirror. Strange noises from the pipes they swore had to be their dead parents trying to communicate from beyond the grave.

  Wouldn’t be so bad if they were just harmless old women, but both had an eye for the men. Wasn’t a cop in Oakwood, Troy included, who hadn’t had his ass pinched by one or both of them. Even Reilly had…and honestly, Troy would’ve have given his right arm to see that little confrontation.

  But still, a scream was a scream and Murphy’s Law said the one time they dismissed the batty Barnetts, that would be the one time they were telling the truth.

  “Great.” He sighed into his cell phone. The deep chuckle from the other told him that Andrews had picked up his inner struggle. There was the distinct probability Troy was getting an ass-pinching from at least one octogenarian before the night was out. Great. “Okay, no problem. If I don’t check in by nine, send out a search party.”

  Andrew’s voice rumbled down the line. “Not a problem, my man. But…surely your girl being there will ward off any unwanted advances?”

  Troy turned the key with a savage twist. “It might. If she was with me.”

  Pulling out into a gap in the traffic, he put his foot down and took the road toward the Barnett’s place. “We had a minor disagreement. If she turns up at the station, can you ask her to call me?”

  There was a long pause before Andrews answered, his tone not as chirpy as Troy expected given he seemed to have a thing for Laney. “I’m sorry to hear that. And, of course. As soon as I see her.”

  “Cheers, man. I’ll catch you later.”

  Clicking the cell off, he slid it into his inside jacket pocket. The drive to the Barnett’s wasn’t long, but it took him out of town and into the countryside. The Barnett place was one of a group of three family owned lots clustered together. Not so close as to be chatting over the garden fence but close enough to hear a scream. If it was loud enough.

  Pebbles crunched under the tires as he pulled the car to a stop in front of the house then cut the engine. Everything seemed normal. Lights on in various rooms, no spine-chilling screams or blood splashed up the walls. Steeling himself, and his butt, Troy got out of the car and headed to the house.

  He felt eyes on him every step of the way to the front door. Nothing unusual about that. With how quiet it was out here, the sisters would have heard his car long before it came into view. Anyone who lived out in the sticks like this would check any vehicle approaching, safe from the concealment of the net curtains.

  With each step toward the door though, the feeling got worse. A lot worse than just a couple of old ladies peeping through the sheers. The hairs on the back on his neck stood on end, practically vibrating and all his survival instincts kicked in on high alert. Adrenaline flooded his body, his heart pounding as he looked around for the source of the danger. Nothing. No one in the trees that surrounded the house. No one behind him, just the house in front.

  Sweat slid down his spine in icy droplets and he had to resist the urge to go for his gun. Didn’t look good knocking on the door of a potential witness with a gun in hand. He put a foot on the steps leading to the veranda and the front door creaked open. He plastered a professional smile on his face as it swung wider to reveal one of the Barnett sisters.

  He’d only seen the two fully dressed, in matching cardigans and pearls, so the fact she was dressed in nightclothes made Troy blink. Not as much as the fact that she hovered six inches off the floor.

  “What the fuck?!”

  His instincts worked faster than his brain because his gun was in his hand at the same second he processed the very non-human movement, trained on the floating Miss Bennett. She…it…grinned, revealing double rows of sharpened, blackened teeth. As Troy watched, blood dripped onto the veranda from under the flannel nightdress.

  “Welcome to the party, Detective Regan,” the demon cackled. Behind it, the second of the sisters came into view, also in nightwear, dragging Tiffany Clarke. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  There was more to Liberty than what met the eye. Had to be. Either that or I was going stir-crazy. While that was always a possibility, particularly with a reaper, I preferred to operate on the assumption everyone else was crazy. After all, crazy people didn’t worry about their sanity, right? So the very fact I thought I might be going mad assured that I was, in fact, perfectly healthy mentally. Or something like that…

  Parking on the side of the road, I put my anger with Troy to the side and got out of the SUV. Work was work, and I couldn’t allow my feelings to interfere with what I had to do. Reaper 101. Always be prepared to reap those you loved. That’s what I’d always been told. Trouble was, I’d never had to put that into practice. I wasn’t sure I could.

  My boot heels rang out on the pavement. The alleyway the abducted girl walked toward home loomed in front of me. Tiffany. Her name was Tiffany Clarke. I really should remember to use names now that I was working with the police instead of running from them.

  I turned off the main path and into the alley. Being pissed at Troy, I didn’t want him knowing what I was up to, so I waited until the cops had cleared the area to investigate. Idiots took their time so night had already fallen. Some of the lights were out, and two flickered on and off. A chill slithered down my spine. Not a feeling I was used to hence it was more than a little unsettling.

  The alley was empty. The crudely laid asphalt meandered into the darkness beyond the last broken light, but I could tell people had been here. I stood in the middle of the path and opened myself to the Shade. Due to my recent promotion and Grimm ‘upgrade,’ new knowledge unfolded in my brain with every situation I encountered. The Shade was so much more than I’d been able to see before.

  I’d always been able to see lifelines, kind of necessary given I had to track down the soul for a reap, and if I concentrated I could see all the lines that had crossed in a given area over the last couple of hours. But…now there was more.

  I jumped aside as I saw not only the lifelines but the bodies they were attached to. As I watched the alley fill with figures, a ghostly version of the big police sergeant, Andrews, walking past me, motioning to another officer. It was a copy. Just a recording in the shade but, still…creepy as fuck.

  Plastering myself to the wall, I slunk along to stay out of the way of the ghosts. I’ve seen a lot of weird shit in my time and real ghosts—as in souls that belonged to dead bodies—than you could shake a stick at. Those I could cope with, but seeing people who were still alive in the shade? That made my skin crawl.

  The rough brick of the wall scraped my palms as I did my best crab impression to where all the action was, about halfway down the alley. There was nothing there, not to the naked eye. The human eye.

  But I’m not human, not really, so the place lit up like center stage. My eyes widened. Demon marks…sigils. Everywhere. The symbols were scrawled across the cracked asphalt, dripped like spray-paint from the rough brick walls either side of the alley, even hung in the air, shimmering like fireflies and spinning gently, moving out from a central point.

  Ground Zero. Like an explosion.

  Ignoring the ghostly figures around me, I crouched in the middle of the alley and brushed my fingertips over the ground. A wave of hatred and revulsion slammed into me, so intense I almost blacked out. Yanking my hand back as if burnt, I landed on my ass, gasping for breath. My stomach rebelled, threatening to eject what little I’d eaten. Fighting it down, I struggled to process what I’d felt, filtering it through the new
knowledgebase in my head.

  The world paused.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no.” I scrambled to my feet and set off at a run.

  I was right. There was way more to Liberty than met the eye.

  And we were all screwed.

  I burst into Reilly’s office with the force of a small tsunami. The door slammed behind me, rattling the glass partition as I advanced on his desk.

  He looked up, startled, then his expression blanked swiftly, but not before I’d caught the slightest glimpse of…not fear, but apprehension maybe? Given that my agitation manifested physically—the normal non-existent wind whipping my hair around and my shadow lengthening to throw a hooded figure on the wall—his lack of fear was quite interesting.

  If he didn’t fear death, then what exactly was Reilly afraid of?

  With no time to ponder, I slammed the map in my hand onto the desk. “Do you know what Liberty’s original name was?”

  He unfolded the map, and wrinkled his nose as dust flew up. It was a copy of one I’d found in the town library. Even the copy was ancient, so the original was way old. Older than most of the buildings in town, and most definitely not on the internet. Sometimes high tech was good, other times you had to go old school, and this was about as old school as it got.

  Reilly shook his head, a frown creasing his brow. “It’s always been Liberty, as far as I know. Why?”

  I threw the drawing I held onto the map. It was a copy as well, but like the map, the original was older than my grandparents. It showed the town sign, circa three hundred years ago. Instead of Liberty though, it read ‘Liberty’s Gate.’

  Reilly picked it up, turning the drawing around and over in long fingers. When he looked at me, his expression was neutral, but polite. Blank but not offensive. He’d make a damn good poker player. I made a mental note never to play him. Ever.

  “And this is important, how?”

  I grabbed a pen from the pot on the side of the phone and started to scrawl over the map. The thick black line joined up local landmarks and points of interest with speed. The nib scratched over the paper, the sound gaining in volume the further I went, until, when I joined the last line, there was an audible click.

  Reilly, who had been leaning over to watch with interest, hissed and yanked his head to the side as though he’d been hit.

  “Shit, what is that?” Squinting, he tried to turn back and look at it but he couldn’t. Each time he was forced to shut his eyes as though someone had shoved a million-watt spotlight in his face.

  “A hellgate.”

  I shoved my hand through my hair, scraping it back from my face. “Impossibly, a new one. That’s why things have been getting freaky here recently. Paranormals are drawn to hellgates like ants to sugar.”

  The stream of curses that dropped from Reilly’s lips would have made a soldier blush. Despite the gravity of the situation, I had to grin, one hip propped against the desk. “Actually, I don’t think that last curse is anatomically possible.”

  He cracked a grin. Well, it was more of a quirk of the lips, but it was the most I’d seen from him, so yeah…I counted that as a win. Quickly, he sobered.

  “So. Liberty was Liberty’s Gate and is becoming a hellgate?”

  I nodded. “Becoming, or always was. One or the other. It’s hard to tell with them. Most of them are mapped out, have been for centuries. But this one…this I didn’t know about, which means it’s either not been active for a very, very long time. Or it’s just becoming active now for the first time.”

  “Jeeeeezuz.” Reilly leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. “Well that just put a crimp in my day for sure.”

  “Oh, it gets worse.” I leaned over and turned the map to face me again. The symbol had faded, the ink leeching into the paper, bleeding away from the symbol like blood running down skin. Before long it would be gone, existence itself not suffering its presence.

  “Not the words I want to hear.”

  “Suck it up, buttercup.” I shrugged. “Intel is perhaps all that’s going to keep you and the residents of this town alive.”

  He hissed, but then nodded. Professionalism to the core. I carried on.

  “The three girls at the Kaufman house were trying to reach the third level of hell. That place is like max security, it’s locked up six ways to Sunday. The only entity who can open it is the King of the Seven Hells. Not even the other six can get it, it’s just the big guy.”

  “Okay, then what’s the problem. They can’t reach it, hopefully nothing in there can get out… Shit.” He closed his eyes, expression written in tight lines. “They managed it, didn’t they? There’s a demon out there. From the third?”

  “Uh-huh, get that man a prize,” I caroled. Yeah, I’m off my rocker most of the time. Thought we’d already established that. “Anywhere else, a couple of schoolgirls with a spell book wouldn’t have stood a hope in hell of getting through.” I sniggered a bit at my own joke, which earned me a sharp look from the captain. “But with this place being a natural gate, they were halfway there. Something reaching from the other side and dayum-baybee we got demon touchdown. My guess is that it’s the advance guard. It’s gonna try and bust the gate wide open and that seer kid is involved somehow.” I closed my eyes, remembering what the mother had said. “Virgin blood. Staple of just about every dark spell out there and then some.”

  “Fuck.”

  “No, thanks, scratched that itch this morning,” I commented, then frowned, ignoring the shocked look that crossed Reilly’s face. “Speaking of Troy, I assumed he would be here. Have you heard from him?”

  Reilly shook his head, but didn’t get to answer because his phone rang. The generic jingle set by the manufacturer by the sound of it. I folded the map up, the sigil I’d drawn now completely indistinct, as he answered.

  “Troy, we were just talking about y—” He stopped, the utter lack of movement making me look up. Reilly’s face was guarded.

  “Who is this? Where is Detective Regan?”

  A chill wrapped around me like an ice blanket. I couldn’t hear anything from the other end of the line, but Reilly’s reaction added to the sense of foreboding. In the corner of my eye, a lifeline grew brighter, and started to vibrate. A human lifeline full of expectation, one choice from becoming non-human or dead.

  “Yes, I understand.”

  Reilly pulled the cell away from his ear, the display showing the call had been ended. He opened his mouth and I closed my eyes, sure I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say.

  “The demon has Troy.”

  Chapter Eight

  My world tilted on its axis, the floor yawing beneath my feet. I focused on the bright lifeline in the corner of my eye, dropping deeper to study it and pick up details of the life it belonged to.

  Troy’s lifeline.

  I got glimpses of his family, his work…the lives he’d helped save…and of his death alone and in pain somewhere dark and cold. The air stuttered in my lungs, fear stealing my ability to breathe. The demon had Troy and he was one small decision away from death, away from the Grimm calling me to reap him.

  Time paused as I realized I couldn’t. Never in all my years as a reaper had I refused the call, but this time I would. I had to. I couldn’t kill the man I loved. I’d suspected I was in love with Troy that first night, but now the knowledge hit me in the face.

  I looked up at Reilly, then past him. My reflection looked back at me from the window behind the desk. Mocking me.

  This was it. I had to make a choice that was no choice. But it was already made. I couldn’t reap him. No…I wouldn’t reap him. If it was my reaper duty or Troy, then he would win every time.

  A shiver of something, I wasn’t sure what, rolled down my spine, lifting the hairs on the back of my neck.

  My lips compressed, the movement echoed in the mirror. I have the ability to save. All of us do, but as I’d argued with Troy hours ago, it’s not in the job description. How do you choose who to save and who not to? And
you couldn’t save them all. There was a natural order to life and death, an ebb and flow that had to be respected. Fuck with that, and it was butterfly wings causing tidal waves and all that shit.

  I couldn’t stand by and pretend it wasn’t my job anymore. This was too close to home. After years of not getting involved, I was about to do something that was a complete no-no in the reaper code. I was going to save a life, rather than take it. I was going to save Troy from…me. Or a fate worse than me.

  I knew what that would mean. If Troy’s line tripped over to reap, it would always be active. I’d have to fight off any reaper who came looking. For the rest of our lives. That was if the rest of my kind didn’t get wind of what I’d done and decide to punch my reaper card. Permanently.

  “He’s at the Barnett place. Demon wants the book we took at the Kaufman house.” Reilly pushed away from the desk, his face grim with purpose.

  “No,” I argued, moving to block his path. He had at least a head and fuck knows how much weight and reach on me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even care that he had uber-commando elite military training, I’d still kick his ass to Purgatory and back if he thought he was handing over what amounted to the keys to the prison.

  “Did you miss the part where that thing has one of my men?” he demanded, anger on his face, and his body tight with tension.

  The rest of the room, our surroundings dropped away as I focused on him. On the here and now. Adrenalin surged. If he was going to start something, I was so ready.

  “That thing has Troy,” I spat back. “And if you hand over that book, we’re gonna be neck deep in more of them, which means we’ve fucked all chance of getting him back alive.”

  Reilly snarled in frustration, hand in his hair, mussing up the short locks. “So, what? We just send you in and hope you can manage not to get him killed. You got your ass kicked by the demon before. I don’t fancy recovering two bodies amid a demon prison-break.”