Rise (Reaper's Redemption Book 3)

by Thea Atkinson

Warren was still on his knees on the floor, but his comb-over had fallen down over his face. It was almost pitiful. I took a step away from him, feeling behind me for the bureau. Everything across my skin was buzzing. I had the feeling that every single hair was lifting and waving around like antennae at the possibility of being able to reap a supernatural entity. Sure, I thought. One more bone deep tattoo to add to my skin somewhere and a mountain of pain to go along with it. I knew I would need to add dozens of them if I was to salvage my eternity before I died. Azrael had been very clear about that. I was fallen, and the only way home was to reap enough supernatural creatures to reclaim my wings. Reap less than that magic number --whatever it was --and when I died, I ended up in his cane as a swirl of glittery dust.

  Some part of my psyche was interested in Warren's offer; the other part – about 99% – was horrified. How exactly would I go about it, anyway. I had no weapon. The last time I had used my bare hands to kill anything, they had been wrapped around an incubus's throat and I'd been raging and protective because I thought the people I loved were in danger from it. Killing Warren would be cold-blooded. I would never be able to do it. I prayed I wouldn't be able to.

  "No," I said. "Not like this."

  Before I knew it, Warren had scrabbled his way across the room and wrapped his hands around my ankles. I tried to shake him off, twist away from him, and head for the bed. I wasn't sure what I thought escaping to there would be good for, but at least it had the furthest corner to back myself into. My gaze flicked to the doorway, but the quickest path to that was his very hairy back, which was at the moment showing far too much of itself beneath the too short T-shirt.

  I felt my hand grip my throat anxiously because I was afraid that if left to hang by my side, it would decide on its own to take Warren up on his offer. The drive beneath the buzzing in my skin was almost too much to bear.

  "Get away from me," I said and gave another kick of my foot, trying to dislodge his grip.

  His palm was incredibly soft on my ankle, like velvet. Fae, he'd said. In that moment, I didn't doubt it. Those hands hadn't done a moment of hard labour. They were nothing like Callum's calloused and cracked palms. Nothing like my Gramp's garden-hardened hands.

  I felt an insistent tug on my ankle and realized Warren was still speaking. I blinked down at him.

  "Please, Ayla," he said, lifting his gaze to mine. The purple within the black irises sparked. I struggled to bring my thoughts back around to what he was asking of me, but all I could register was the fresh wave of wood smoke that crept in through the crack I had left in the window when I'd come in to bed. I imagined somewhere, someone was feeding their wood stove with a fresh chunk to stave off the crisp October chill in the air. Such a normal thing, that.

  "You must do your duty," he prodded again, this time pulling on my ankle as though with that motion he could pull me closer to what he wanted.

  But what he wanted wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want any of this.

  "Let go," I said and reached down to peel his fingers from my ankles. He was incredibly strong for how soft his hands felt. No matter how hard I worked at his fingers, I couldn't pry either hand from my skin. "My duty is no business of yours."

  "But it is my business," he said. "I'm supernatural. I want to die. You are Nathelium. You'll reap me and this will all be over. That's the way it's done. It's the way it's always been done."

  We struggled there for several minutes, me trying to pull his hands away and free my feet from his grip, and him crawling ever forward, until he had nearly wrapped himself around me like a cat. I felt panic rising in my chest. I couldn't do this. I would collect for Azrael now and then over the rest of my life, and hopefully collect up all of those nasty tattoos that would earn me my wings again, but I certainly wasn't going to murder the pitiful thing kneeling in front of me for no reason at all. I mean, a tooth fairy for heaven's sake. What could he have done that was so terrible he couldn't find paradise?

  No. I'd made my decision. I wouldn't do it.

  A soft hoot from down the hall seemed to support my decision.

  Warren's fingers clenched around my ankle and his fingernails dug into the skin.

  "Ouch," I said. "You're hurting me."

  "You don't know pain," he said. "A little discomfort. A little inconvenience." His voice grew cold and the soft pudgy look to his face disappeared under the hard edge of anger. "I could take your teeth, you know," he said with a slight note of threat in his voice. "It'll be very painful since they're so nicely anchored. It's always painful for teeth to shift when it isn't their time."

  I froze, thinking of all the dreams I'd had over the years of my teeth falling out and the fear of that impotence as they tumbled from my jaws. That paled beneath the thought of having them torn from the gums without anaesthetic.

  "Is that a threat, Warren?"

  "I shouldn't have to threaten you," he said.

  I noted that he didn't look the least bit contrite. Yet, he couldn't keep my eye.

  I stared down at the top of his head and the beads of sweat running down his hair into his temples. I realized what it was he was doing. Trying to scare me into attacking him.

  "You can't trick me," I said. "I'm not stupid. I told you I wouldn't kill you. Hell, I don't even know how I would kill you."

  "That's why I've come in human form. We are more vulnerable this way. Cold forged iron will do nicely." From somewhere beneath that shirt, he pulled an archaic looking blade the size of my forearm and brandished it for me.

  Even as he tilted it in the light, I felt the mark on my calf start to burn. It was the first of my tattoos, the one I had earned by killing a fallen angel turned reaper who was trying to collect me for the top of Azrael's cane back in the days when I was blissfully unaware of my origin. If I was a reluctant reaper, the twisting pain in my calf certainly tried to make me little more amenable.

  "Not going to happen, Warren," I said and bent down to rub at the burning in my skin. "Why don't you just do it yourself?"

  I expected him to look aghast at the suggestion, but instead he slammed his palm against the carpet.

  "Because I can't," he said. "He won't let me."

  I almost asked him who this he was that he referred to, but I snapped my mouth closed. I didn't want to know. It was none of my business because I wasn't getting involved.

  "I'm begging you," he said. "Do your duty. I shouldn't have to beg or threaten you. You're Nathelium. You should want to reap me. You should be rejoicing at such easy prey. Especially with you being at your fledgling level and all. It won't always be this easy. Other creatures will be much more difficult. "

  I felt my mouth twist into a hard-line. As though I had taken pride in those reaps I'd made. As though I had enjoyed it.

  "It has never been easy," I said, thinking about every single fare I had collected so far for the Angel of Death. Things were never as they seemed. Not on first blush. And I had matured enough to realize that.

  I wouldn't let this portly tooth fairy bully or trick me into making a rash decision, one that was against my better nature, no matter how badly the burning pain in my calf screamed out for relief. I was Nathelium alright; there wasn't anything I could do about that now. But I'd made each one of my reaps so far out of fear or anger--two very rash decision-inducing emotions. Pity would be just one more emotion that led me down a rabbit hole of consequence. It wasn't as if he was threatening me or my family. It wasn't as if he was dying or anything, suffering painfully.

  I looked down at Warren, deciding to be honest, at least.

  "You've got me all wrong, Warren," I said. "I'm not totally committed to the Nathelium thing. In fact, It's done nothing for me except make me miserable. Besides, I have a ton of stuff going on right now."

  I waved my hand in the air as though to indicate just exactly how much stuff had piled up around me. "I've got school, chores, we have the pest-control coming tomorrow to spray for roaches and I have to get the tent pitched outside..." I let the list trai
l off as though there were much more.

  He didn't take my refusal well at all. He actually snarled at me. It might have been frightening to see a magical creature bare his teeth at me like that if he had actually had any.

  "You have to," he said. "It's almost All Hallows."

  I considered asking what Halloween had to do with it all, but shrugged it off. It was none of my business why he wanted to die. I wouldn't get involved. Not this way.

  He let go of me and leaned back on his haunches, looking up at me with a curious expression.

  "You have no idea what it took for me to get here." He looked back over his shoulder as though he expected something to be standing behind him. "Do you even know what time it is?" he said.

  So nicely freed from his hold, I took several steps backwards until I was against my bed. I sank down on it and pulled my feet up to rest on the mattress, my knees beneath my chin. I wrapped my arms around them and stole a glance at the clock.

  "I'd say it's about five minutes past the time you should be gone."

  He released a heavy sigh and nodded at me slowly as though he was just coming to some realization and didn't like it one bit. The expression that climbed onto his face was one of resignation. He lay the blade down at my feet.

  Alright," he said. "Have it your way. But don't say I didn't give you this chance." He set one more aggrieved glance around the room and planted his hands on his knees with a slap. Then he pushed himself to his feet.

  He stood there for several long moments, looking at me.

  He might have kept my interest for several moments more, except when his mouth twitched as though he was going to speak, a shriek came from down the hall. Not an owl this time. Just one long high-pitched scream.

  I imagined Warren disappeared at exactly the same moment I tore toward the door and yanked it open. I might have hoped the screaming was just a hungry Nicki bawling to be fed or from the squeal of her owl being rolled onto and smothered again, only to be brought back to life somehow by the demigod's magics.

  But it wasn't. I knew the sound of fear by now.

  And Sarah was most definitely terrified.

  CHAPTER 3

  I raced for Sarah's room without a second thought for Warren behind me or whether or not he would be gone or follow me down the hall. All I knew was that Sarah didn't usually scream. If she had, it meant something far worse than a stampede of cockroaches had found their way to her bedroom. There wasn't much that would terrify her, not after the kind of life she had led the last few years or after the dozen years before that with her family. A girl didn't live on the street, choosing instead the uncertain mouldy comfort of a sleeping bag unless your whole life was pretty bad.

  If she was yelling for help, then it had to be awful.

  I was vaguely aware as I skidded to a halt outside her bedroom door that the rug had burned off the outer layer of skin on the side of my toe. Under normal circumstances, I might have babied that foot as I barged through the door, but not this time. Even with her door half ajar, I could hear the incessant hooting of the owl rising in pitch and at times it almost matched Sarah's unceasing yelling. I could only make out a few coherent words. The two of those things combined together was enough to raise the hair on my arms.

  "I don't know what to do," she was shrieking and sobbing all at the same time. "I'm trying. I can't."

  I flicked on the switch and flooded the room with light. She had her hands in the belly of Nicky's crib and she cast a frenzied look my way over her shoulder.

  "We have to get it off her," she said.

  All I could tell from my vantage point was that she was tugging on something. Strangling, is what I thought at first. The baby was strangling on something. I didn't dare let my thoughts go further than that. I rushed to Sarah's side, images of bumper ties wrapped around the baby's delicate throat. What I saw inside stopped me short long before I could get my hands into the crib and start working at the strings I imagined were around the baby's neck.

  It wasn't strangulation. Nothing like it. The baby wasn't tied up in blankets or bumper pad strings, but was wrapped in some sort of moving gelatinous ball. She moved and morphed, stretched and curled in and out of shape, taking the membrane with her every movement. My mind stuttered over Sarah's words: we have to get her out of there. I started fumbling with the membrane, my fingers brushing against Sarah's as we sought a hole to poke through.

  "What the heck is it?" I heard myself say.

  "I don't know," she said. She sounded terrified. Exactly how I felt.

  I had to swallow down twice before I could rid my mouth of the bile that rose on its own. I knew the baby couldn't breathe in there. We had to work fast, and yet my stupid hands wouldn't work right. I couldn't think.

  The owl had taken to flapping its juvenile wings as it sat perched on the headboard of the bed. It hooted three more times and then shrieked. The sound raised the hair on my nape. It felt as though someone had opened a door to a freezer and the blast of cold air was swimming through the room.

  Those deft fingers of Sarah's had found enough of the membrane that she could pinch it together, and then she was tugging on it, twisting. Trying to break through the skin of it.

  All through it, little Nicky was rolling around inside that sphere. I kept telling myself that if she was moving, she was still alive. That had to be a good sign, right despite some sort of cloud covering the transparent surface, obscuring her from view.

  I grabbed for a pinch of membrane on the other side of Sarah's hands, thinking maybe we could pull it together and break it. That was when I realized exactly why Sarah was having such a hard time. It was tough and thick. Exactly like trying to pinch the edge off of an exercise ball. And something else too.

  "Sweet heaven," I said, doing my best not to yank my hand away from the surface. Beneath the rubbery surface I could feel the squishing of some viscous gel. No doubt what was intermittently obscuring sight of Nicki.

  "How long has it been?" I said. Dread made my voice so thick I barely recognized it. I didn't want to hear the length of time. I didn't want to know if it had been minutes and not seconds. But God. I had to know.

  Sarah didn't even answer, and yet her face told me everything. Too long.

  I panned the room, not seeing a single thing. I wasn't even sure what I was looking for, but I kept hoping something would leap out at me. Some sharp object, maybe, lying on the desk. I could feel Nicki moving beneath my hand. Moving meant living. I had to remember that.

  But for how long? And how long had it been since I had come into the room? Ten minutes? Two? Did it even matter?

  "Okay," I said, telling myself we needed to be calm. "She's breathing. Look. She's moving around in there. She wouldn't be moving around if she wasn't breathing, right?"

  "How can she?" Sarah said. "Could you breathe through that disgusting goo?"

  "You have to remember we don't know much about her, Sarah." The reasoning came easy for being so scared, and part of my brain told me all I was doing was clutching at straws. I braced myself for anything as I ran my palm over the surface of the sphere, feeling for features. Yes. I thought I could feel her spine. She was wrapped in the fetal position, no doubt.

  "We have to assume this is normal," I said, telling myself that I believed it. "We have to tell ourselves that this is not a bad thing."

  I didn't sound convincing, not even to myself, and evidently not to Sarah either.

  Her voice rose in pitch. "Are you listening to yourself?" she said. "Can't you feel how she's rolling around in there? She's trying to get out. "

  Those very blue eyes of Sarah's met mine over the crib and they were wide with panic.

  "You have to do something," she said, making my chest ache with the desire to do exactly what she wanted, but how could I? She was the sorceress. She had more tricks up her sleeve than I did, way more power. All I had was a bit of doppelganger glamour.

  Despite it all, I fumbled around, trying to find Nicki's head with my fingers. May
be I could find her mouth and poke my fingers in there, tear the membrane apart with my nails. My palm cupped around the small skull, and I with a gasp of relief, I worked my fingers toward where I thought her mouth might me. Just then a tiny face pressed against the membrane and worked itself into a grimace. I nearly staggered backward. Bile rose in my throat at the way it looked at me, terrified, agonized. Then it disappeared beneath the goo again and I let go my breath in a rush.

  "We have to hurry," I said.

  There was no more time. I knew it. I heard my own sob as I recoiled and tried again. Nothing, no amount of digging in with my nails or Sarah's in tandem with mine did anything.

  The sphere elongated as though, from the inside, Nicki was stretching out. I thought I could make out the imprints of toes against the membrane. The surface quivered.

  "Knife," I said. I was already mentally calculating how long it would take for me to run down the stairs into the kitchen. Too much time. But I had to try. What other choice did we have?

  I fled the room toward the stairs. I thought of Warren as I pounded down the treads. If he hadn't woken me up, I might not have been able to get out of bed and into Sarah's room fast enough to make a difference. I would have been muddy with drowsy sleep. I hated to admit that the timing was perfect. And yet, I didn't know if I was going to make a difference now.

  I halted mid stairs. Warren. He had brought a knife. A long, broad, ugly looking thing that was even now lying on my bedroom floor. So long as he'd left it, that was. I hesitated. What if he'd taken it? I'd have wasted more time. I raced down the stairs, decision made, and ran for the kitchen.

  The cutlery drawer rattled as I pulled it open. The tines of a fork bit down beneath my fingernails as I rummaged through, feeling my way for a knife or scissors some sort. Spoon, fork. Nothing sharp enough. My gaze roamed the counters as I rummaged. Gramp's sharpest knives were all stored in a butcher block. Of course. Right there next to the microwave.

  I left the drawer hanging open as I grabbed for the biggest handle and then I was running back upstairs. My distant calm had begun to leak away, and left in its place, a blind panic. The fledgling owl had taken to shrieking nonstop and the sound razored through my eardrums, urging me on like a fire alarm. My senses were too overloaded. I couldn't think. I just ran. My breath came in short gasps.