The surrounding trees were live with sounds, none of which gave any indication of a Reaper’s slithery approach. Gwen knew it, though. Of all of them gathered here, she alone had been touched by Death’s talon. Though Jonas had taken his share of bullets and wounds, and Tess had the scars to prove her worth as a fighter, only Gwen had gone far enough into the Dark Beyond to call forth a Reaper.
Tess broke the silence with a question spoken in a low voice. “Why is it after her? Why her?”
Jonas answered reluctantly. “She died, but only for a few seconds before we got her heart started up again. This is a mistake. Gwen is on the mend and getting stronger day by day.”
Was there no calling this beast off in circumstances like this? he had wondered a hundred times or more, sensing its presence in Miami, hovering like a dark cloud near their home as he and others from his pack took turns watching over his sister. A living, breathing being couldn’t just end without cause. Gwen had survived her grievous wounds, so there had to be a system of checks and balances for instances like this.
At his left, Gwen issued another growl that alerted him to the Reaper’s approach. Gwen’s sharp teeth were bared. He feared what might happen next, and that with Tess and Gwen present, his plan to trade his life for Gwen’s might go astray.
Tess called out to the darkness in front of them with a reasonable question. “If you goofed up where she is concerned, why not just admit that and call it a day?”
Jonas fisted his hands, inhaling the sour fragrance trailing this Reaper and loving Tess even more for standing beside him.
“What is the penalty for mix-ups?” Tess called out.
She was tense, brave, and could have been his lifelong partner. He would have liked that.
Gwen growled again. His sister knew everything now, including his feelings for Tess. If given the gift of hindsight, maybe he could have concluded that Gwen had helped by nudging him toward the hunter. The fact slapping him in the face now was that his sister must have known about Tess being a Were before he had.
Darkness coated the area beside them with a misty dampness that was incongruent with the weather. The swirling black fog began to gather, twisting itself into a manifestation straight out of nightmares.
The Reaper floated in a sea of fog—a creature so fluid that it probably took on the shape most likely to scare the pants off of everyone it faced.
Scare tactic, Jonas thought, with a fleeting bit of insight. In that respect, this sucker was a lot like a shape-shifter.
“You can’t have her,” Jonas said. “She lives. You’ve lost.”
The insubstantial vision began to grow, stretching a few inches at a time until it had reached a height of nine feet, maybe more. Its face was a skinless skull with dark holes for eyes. A black cloak hid the rest. The thing hovered, never solid enough to be motionless. It didn’t make an attempt to address Jonas’s remarks. Jonas didn’t see the scythe these creatures were famous for carrying, at least in mythology books.
Jonas had to wonder how Reapers actually absconded with the souls they sought. If those souls were still part of the living bodies that housed them, and weren’t yet the misty essences that hung around for a few seconds after the body had shut down before heading off on their next adventure...then how did this Reaper extract them?
Reapers, by their very definition, were the purveyors of the souls they could snatch before those souls had gone heavenward. They took bad souls to a dark place. Tainted souls. Souls not destined to move on to something better or be rehoused in new bodies, as some people believed.
But Gwen was just a child. A good kid, an innocent soul not yet indoctrinated into the world of savages and killers until the senseless attack on her life.
Gwen didn’t deserve a visit from this Reaper. Therefore, there had to have been a mistake. A grave error in perception.
As soon as that thought had arrived, Jonas’s fear began to melt away. He took a step, leaving Tess and Gwen slightly behind. In a strong voice, he said, “You probably took the souls of the rogues that attacked my sister and her friends. You, or another creature like you. They all deserved to find you waiting for them. I’ll be the first to agree with that. Maybe though, with my sister’s body lying lifeless among those bastards, her name somehow got tangled up with that rest of the names on your list.”
Jonas upped his volume. “I helped to kill those rogues and fought like a fiend. I have taken my share of lives on the job and on the sidelines, but always in the name of justice and to ensure the freedom of the many creatures on this earth. So if I offer myself up in my sister’s place, would you even be able to accept my soul as an offering, especially when my sister could not have been slated for your hands in the first place?”
Tess was there with him now and tuning in. She had a hand on Gwen’s ruffled fur and was giving off a chilling vibe of comprehension.
The Reaper faced them without responding, unless the blood beginning to seep from its empty eye sockets was meant to frighten everyone present into subservience.
From its back, two protrusions emerged and began to take the shape of wings. Black featherless wings, double the size of the Reaper. Those wings dripped the wetness of the mist that surrounded this dead, inhuman, dark-hearted entity. The only sound now was that of droplets hitting the dirt.
Was this vision frightening? Yes. But again, Jonas told himself, these gyrations might be nothing more than a show. Had there been a full moon present, he would have offered his own show in return.
“Pretty damn impressive, I have to say.”
Jonas started. He had not spoken those words. Tess had. And there was more.
“Still, arguments being arguments, yours pales in comparison to what’s really the case,” she continued. “So we’re back to square one. You made a mistake that has to be rectified. Do that. Fix this and go after someone who needs your attention more than Jonas’s sister does. You’re wasting your time here.”
Tess’s latest challenge was so surprising that Jonas felt a grin tug at the corners of his lips in spite of the danger facing them. He also sensed Gwen’s advance.
The Reaper’s big black wings beat the air, causing dirt and leaves to fly in all directions. Jonas raised the claws that he had been hiding as if this were a show-and-tell game, rather than a thin line between keeping and losing something precious to him.
Claws were the best he could do without the moon, and a reflection of the anger that had been building inside him for the past few weeks. However, the Reaper looked at them with its bloody sockets, and the big wings stopped flapping.
In a move Jonas had not been expecting, but should have, the sound of maneuvering muscles caught his attention suddenly, and his heart took a dive.
There was light in the darkness. The pale form of his sister, naked from head to toe and glowing with misplaced confidence, emerged from behind him...to face her tormenter.
Chapter 31
Tess stumbled back, struck cold by the evening’s next surprise. One minute, she had hold of the white wolf’s fur. The next minute, she was looking at the girl that had hidden inside that wolf’s shape.
She had known that the two different shapes were aspects of the same being, yet seeing this for real in Gwen came as a shock.
Gwen moved forward, showing more courage than a frail teenaged girl had the right to possess. There was truly nothing typical about Jonas’s little sister. And though the attack Jonas had mentioned in the girl’s background remained a blank for Tess, she could not imagine what kind of courage it took for Gwen to confront her fears head-on here.
“I won’t go with you,” Gwen said.
Her voice was as light as the rest of her—an innocent young girl’s voice, despite having been through hell in the past.
Hearing his sister speak had a strange effect on Jonas. Tess saw him blink. He renewed his position by rolling his broad shoulders. She was at
tuned to every nuance and change in his behavior and figured that Gwen must not have spoken to him for some time.
The Reaper’s attention shifting to Gwen was like a tracking beam. Its black wings opened to span the length of the distance between two trees. Majestic things, those wings, if they had been on an angel instead of on the back of a representative of the Fallen One. That’s what this guy was, after all...a lifeless member of the dark side. There was no other explanation for its appearance and failure to accept its mistakes.
Tess vowed to send this creature back to where it belonged if it so much as made one move in Gwen’s direction.
“Go,” Gwen said to the Reaper in a scene not unlike the old story of David versus Goliath. A small girl was challenging the Grim Reaper in a fight for her soul. No weapons. Nothing but the rightness of her stand.
“Go back and leave me alone,” Gwen said.
The Reaper’s wings retracted, folding over each other before being absorbed into the dark whole once more. The area became saturated with the odor of its anger. Hell, given where this thing probably came from and who it served, in its place, Tess wouldn’t have wanted to come back empty-handed either.
Tess felt the creature reach out with its mind—not to her, but to Gwen. The fact that she understood this was a further surprise.
“Not going to happen,” Jonas said. “She is not going to die, so get over it.”
The figure it had presented to them began to collapse the way the wings had, pulling back, sinking into itself, until the skull was gone and only a patch of undulating fog remained.
But the Reaper didn’t leave. Nothing so easy as that outcome occurred. Just when Tess had started to think it had heard them and was tucking its tail, another form reared up to threaten.
* * *
Jonas rushed forward to meet the dark warrior that presented itself to them in dark armor, wielding a flaming sword. Consumed by the heat of an angry passion, he threw himself at the latest incarnation of the Reaper, hitting the fog and passing right through it.
He stumbled, righted himself and spun around, focusing on the fact that this entity had no real physical form to fight and that weapons and claws were meaningless. So what would it take? That was the question plaguing him with an incessant chatter. How were the good guys going to win?
Tess had placed herself in front of Gwen with the kind of speed intrinsic to powerful she-wolves. She wore an expression of cunning, daring the Reaper to get past her. Her eyes flashed with anger. The hunter had merged with the wolf in her, and those two things coming together made for a strong, relentless team of fighters.
Her hands were raised. Her posture was set. She tilted her head to one side as Jonas had seen her do on another occasion, so that she could look at this problem from all angles.
God, how he wanted her.
“It’s a trade I was going to offer you,” Jonas said. “Then I discovered the secret.”
He had the Reaper’s attention. Feeling it turn his way was like being dunked into a vat of ice water. The thing had not reached Gwen. Even if it had, Jonas wanted to believe that it couldn’t have done anything to her. It all circled back to reasoning versus action. The Reaper had not yet taken Gwen. All it had done so far was to appear at its most frightening and threaten with that.
The importance of that piece of the puzzle made Jonas shake.
“Secrets can be so annoying,” he said loudly, garnering still more of the Reaper’s chilling focus. “And I have just learned yours.”
The flaming sword glowed red-orange. But it wasn’t really a sword. And this entity had no real power here because it didn’t belong here. The case for this had already been presented and had to be correct, because how long could it take a Reaper to do its nasty business? Minutes had passed since Gwen had shown herself, and nothing had happened.
The fact was that they didn’t have to fight this Reaper and couldn’t have if this visit was legitimate. What they had to do was convince the creature to give up and go away.
Jonas joined Tess and lowered his claws. Tess’s thoughts rang loud and clear in his mind. “What secret? What’s going on?”
Gwen came out from behind Tess. She slipped her hand into his, further strengthening his sense of the rightness of his theory.
“Your secret is that you can’t solidify because you aren’t supposed to be here,” Jonas said. “I have to wonder, then, why you’d bother to come all this way, perhaps without the permission of the being you serve.”
He heard Tess’s muffled hiss and Gwen’s soft sigh. Jonas spoke over those sounds.
“We have nothing to lose here, really. Do you?”
The fog seemed to lose ground. At the same time, the flaming sword disappeared, leaving Jonas with a shiver of satisfaction.
Maybe...but could this be right? The Reaper hadn’t realized it was on the wrong path and was running on momentum? Were there mistakes like that, even for this creature? It had gotten this wrong and was just now beginning to see that?
Gwen moved. Still holding his hand, she walked right up to the entity they had been so afraid of and said, “We all make mistakes,” as though this wasn’t an entity that might have been forged in the fires of Hell.
A young girl’s words caused the craziest result—a young girl that would one day become a revered queen of their species. Given all other outcomes and alternate scenarios of a night like this one, and given that Jonas’s theory could just as easily have been wrong, the warrior looked Gwen right in the face. And though both Jonas and Tess had already moved toward Gwen, the warrior’s semblance hovered briefly and then just melted away. One more whiff of its sour odor, and then all traces of the Reaper were gone.
Jonas and Tess stood there gaping, not quite sure how this result had been achieved. Tess spoke first.
“Too easy,” she muttered, searching the area, expecting the Reaper’s return.
“Yes,” Jonas agreed.
Tess looked at him. “Is it over? Could it be over?”
He nodded. “I actually believe it is.”
“You went head to head with a Grim Reaper and won?”
“I’m not sure anyone won,” Jonas returned truthfully. Though his heart felt lighter than it had in weeks, he found it too damn dangerous to believe that thing had gone for good.
He turned to Gwen, who at that moment looked as regal and capable as her lineage suggested. “I’m sorry you had to learn all of this the hard way,” he said.
Gwen smiled. Her gaze moved from him to Tess and back. “Maybe I’m not as mindless as you think, and never was.”
Jonas was sure there was a story in what his sister had just said, one he’d have to explore. For now though, Gwen appeared to have put that Reaper in its place. It was unbelievable, and true.
He found smiling hard after everything. His eyes found Tess’s. “You’ve earned hearing the truth about Gwen and about me. I owe you that. But now that the immediate danger is over and hopefully remains that way, you and I have some unfinished business to take care of.”
Hell, yes, it was time to take a minute and shore these emotions up. He was still here. His soul had not been traded for Gwen’s, and that meant he had time to look at the future. Plan a future. In fact, he had all the time in the world to cross the next hurdle...with Tess. He and Gwen could stay here for a while longer. He and Tess could get to know each other better.
Tess’s sigh cut short the exotic leanings underscoring his immediate ideas about what kind of future with her that was. Tess was still wary and wore her anxiousness like a suit of armor. Without the danger of that Reaper looming over them, she would have to find out more about herself and her true nature. If she chose not to address those things, Tess would probably revert back to her old ways and shun all Weres.
However, the softness in Tess’s eyes when she turned them on Gwen told him there was hope. And Gwen’
s returning smile confirmed it.
Possibly Gwen had been privy to all of those thoughts going through his mind. Facing Tess, his sister was the first to break a somewhat lengthy silence.
“You are, you know, even if you don’t want to be,” she said to Tess.
To Tess’s credit, she didn’t ask what Gwen meant. Instead, she said, “If it’s true, my life has been a lie.”
“Maybe just the part of it that occurred after you were injured by one of the werewolves you chased,” Jonas suggested.
Tess let him take her hand, though she shuddered. Turning her wrist over, Jonas ran a finger across her scars. “And since you came into contact with whatever caused these.”
She tried to draw her hand from his, and he held on. “In light of that, isn’t it possible, understanding even, that your parents would help their daughter to survive such a change in plans?”
Her blue eyes were like fire when they again met his. Denial was there, and so was a flicker of curiosity. “Silver?” Tess whispered.
Jonas nodded. “The silver was to keep your wolf tethered. To make sure you didn’t find out about the change and that no one else did either. It’s the kind of protection a loving family would offer, Tess. Not a lie, but an act of love.”
His explanation affected her greatly, and he still had more to say. “There’s love in all kinds of strange places. There is fighting and enemies and friends among all species. There is justice to be sought and rogues to go after...all of the things you already do. You’ll be welcome among us. You will never be alone again or have to live by yourself in the woods if that’s the path you choose. I know you like my sister, and you know what she is. You like me.”
He waited for her to argue with that. She didn’t.
“We can help,” he went on. “Gwen and I can stay for as long as you’ll have us.”
Tess’s eyes were moist and glistening. “And then what? You go back to Miami and I carry on with my disguise?”
“You come with us for as long as it takes to get Gwen settled into a new life. Then we can...”
Wolf Slayer Page 22
