Reap & Redeem

by Lisa Medley

  “You warned me about this, so I spoke with Grim when we closed the last portal. He’s offered a solution. At least a temporary one. Let Samkiel take them to a resting place.”

  “For what purpose? Perpetual Purgatory? Is that any better than true death?”

  “What if Nate’s right? What if there’s another way?”

  “Are you shitting me? Their souls are gone, Deacon.”

  “But if there’s a chance…”

  “How?”

  Samkiel walked toward the wanderers. He spread his arms wide, and a bright white radiance began to project outward from him like a searchlight. The glow encompassed the wanderers and froze them in place. It increased in intensity until Kylen’s retinas began to burn, making him blink. As Samkiel walked toward them, their bodies winked from the corporal plane before Kylen’s eyes. The reaper vanished with the wanderers and the alley was plunged into darkness once again.

  “What the hell?”

  “Our boy has a special gift, newly enhanced with his promotion. Dare and Zak can do it, too.” Raguel turned to leave the alley. “We’d better get a move on if we want to take any of these assholes off the street tonight. I’m heading out farther with Dare and Oreo. If the demons are poaching so heavily around here, an exit portal can’t be far. The rest of the crew will spread out from here. We’ve got this. You two do what you need to do.”

  And with that, Kylen and Deacon found themselves alone in the alley.

  “What—exactly—was that?”

  Deacon smiled. “One of the many benefits of having a Reaper Authority Force. No more killing innocents or burning bodies. Grim chose these men for their talents, and then…enhanced them.”

  “And you? Can you do that now?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting. And to what fresh hell are those wanderers headed?”

  “Not Hell. A holding place in Purgatory.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t have all the answers here, Kylen. But it’s better than the way we’ve been working. Burning bodies in our basement? Do you really want to keep doing that? It wouldn’t even be possible with the numbers we’re dealing with now.”

  Kylen closed his scythe and slid it back into its scabbard. “Grim’s going to need a bigger cell.”

  “Not if we keep moving.”

  * * *

  As Kylen and Deacon left their alley, Bo galloped onto the sidewalk a block down the street and directed two gruff barks at them before turning back toward the alley. Nate stumbled out after him, his face contorted in pain and terror. Kylen scanned the street for the source of his distress, but there were no attackers in sight.

  “What is it?” Deacon asked as Nate crumpled to the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know. I was fine, and then I started feeling pain. Everywhere… Ahhhhh.” Nate folded himself in half and lay on the pavement moaning.

  Deacon squatted beside him. “Can you flash? Where do you want to go? Should we take you to the hospital?”

  “Ruth…” Nate ground out through shudders.

  Deacon grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him lightly, demanding his attention. “What about Ruth? Do we need to go home?”

  “Something’s wrong with her.” Nate moaned on the pavement.

  “How do you know?”

  “Maybe another of Grim’s ‘enhancements’?” Kylen offered.

  “Holy Hell, could this night get any worse?” Deacon asked.

  Kylen nodded an implied yes.

  “Hospital.” Nate groaned.

  Kylen looked from Nate to Deacon in frustration. “Better take him. I’ll make my way back to the cemetery, and then flash home to check on the women.”

  “Flash from here, Kylen.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can now.”

  Kylen was sure the man had lost his ever-loving mind. Despite Grim’s supposed endowment, the thought of flashing from unconsecrated ground was preposterous to him. Of course, after what he’d just witnessed, maybe it wasn’t such a stretch.

  “What the hell.” As he concentrated on returning home, Kylen started to feel the slow tug to which he’d grown accustomed. Anxiety and dread stirred in his gut as he flashed through the consecrated subway for the first time ever from unconsecrated ground. After all the strange incidents of the night, Kylen couldn’t help but wonder what would come next.

  Then he landed on the smoldering ash that was once his trailer.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Olivia careened the car down the road, barely keeping it under control as the cats raced beside the car and gravel sprayed behind them. If she could make it to the part of the road where the pavement kicked in, she knew she could outrun them. She knew she could. But if she put on any more speed over this gravel, she’d T-bone the three of them into a tree. When a handful of cats leapfrogged over one another and onto the windshield obscuring her view, she knew it was game over. She couldn’t drive anywhere if she couldn’t see.

  “The cemetery! Pull into the cemetery!” Maeve yelled from the backseat. It was directly to their left. This she could do.

  Olivia wrenched the wheel to the left, taking out two sections of the cemetery’s chain-link fence as she slid the Lincoln across the boundary of Good Hope and onto consecrated ground. The cats that were on the car incinerated in little sparks and poofs of smoke as the car skidded through the wet grass, crashing into the side of the concrete Wesley crypt. Maeve and Ruth slammed against the back of the front seats, and Olivia’s head collided with the steering wheel before slamming back against the headrest.

  Her hands were shaking violently, but she couldn’t unpeel them from the steering wheel. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she pushed them back and forced herself to look out the windshield. No more cats. She turned to scan the perimeter of the cemetery. The creatures lined the edges, but none of them had made it through the consecrated barrier.

  “Good driving, Olivia.”

  Ruth lay unconscious on the floorboard of the back seat, her skin a deathly shade of pale except for her injured arms. Panic flooded Olivia, but one look from Maeve set her back on course.

  “Don’t you even think about coming unglued.” Maeve pushed her door open. “We’re going to get out of here. And we’re going to be fine.”

  “How? Those monsters have us trapped.”

  “We’re going to flash. You’ve been able to travel that way before. Surely to God you can do it again.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  “Lock yourself in the car, and do not leave it under any circumstances. I’ll be back as fast as I can. I know it’s dangerous for Ruth to travel that way, but I’m not going to sit here and watch her die.”

  “Can you give her energy? Can you heal her like Kylen heals me?”

  “I don’t know what it would do to her in this state. I can’t risk it.”

  “What about the baby?”

  “That’s out of our hands now.” Maeve eased Ruth off the floorboard, cradling her in her arms. “Come around and help me get her out of the car. Let’s get to the hospital. It’s our best chance right now.”

  Olivia reached for the car handle just as the driver-side door was ripped from the vehicle. A man stood beside the car. His sleek black hair was streaked with blond highlights, and his eyes glowed yellow in the moonlight. A wave of power washed over her when he reached for her hand. As soon as they touched, Olivia’s fear eased immediately. He pulled her from the car, scooped her up and carried her in his arms.

  She had some sense of Maeve struggling with Ruth and then trying to come around the car to help her, but her surroundings blurred and her mind went fuzzy as an inexplicable feeling of ease settled over her like a warm blanket.

  Clearly she hadn’t actually survived the crash. She sent a prayer up for Ruth and the baby and another one for Kylen. This was the end. This was her angel, the one who’d come to take her to Heaven. She wished it could have been Kylen, but in a way this was best. Maybe he wouldn’t be as tort
ured since he hadn’t experienced her death first-hand.

  Her skin sizzled with energy as she was pulled into the consecrated subway. The fine hairs rose across her body, and she pulled in a last breath before they raced through complete blackness and toward the hereafter.

  * * *

  The acrid smell of burning plastic, shingles, wood and worse things filled his nostrils, but it wasn’t the smell that made his eyes well with tears. Ruth’s house was gone. No, not just gone. It had disintegrated into a scattered patch of ash and smoldering debris. The only things left standing were the stone walls and fireplace like a sandstone Stonehenge. Red embers glowed everywhere like a carpet of magma covering the front and back yard.

  Kylen couldn’t muster the strength to move forward to sift through the wreckage. It was all gone. They were all gone.

  His home. His friend. His lover.

  The only reason he knew he stood where his own trailer had once been was the glint of steel that caught his eye in the moonlight. His blades lay in a jumble to his left.

  There were no remaining traces of the circle of protection, but the scorched earth followed a perfectly symmetrical ring around the house, which made him wonder if the circle failed before or after Ruth’s death…because her death was the only explanation for why the circle would have failed so catastrophically. She was the main energy supply. There hadn’t been time to include any of the others into the magical power grid. Nate had reinforced it months ago, adding himself, Deacon and, reluctantly, Kylen, but the circle was strongest when Ruth was inside it. Ruth was strong, so if she had been here when this happened, the onslaught must have been massive.

  Paralyzed with shock and disbelief, he felt himself rocking on his heels, his head shaking side to side of its own accord, a gathering storm building inside him. When he saw two vertical yellow eyes glowing at the edge of the woods, his madness unleashed.

  Kylen rushed across the smoking ground toward the yellow eyes, already knowing full well what it was, suddenly piecing together the likely cause of this unfathomable destruction. He crashed through the woods in pursuit of the imp. Limbs and thorny vines ripped and tore at him as he raced after the beast. He wouldn’t catch it, couldn’t catch it. But he clawed his way forward, sprinting after the thing until his lungs burned and his heart threatened to seize up and out of his chest.

  Then he caught it.

  With his bare hands, he tore the arms and legs from the fiend. A wretched odor erupted from the ragged holes left from the severed limbs but he ignored it, grasping the top of the creature’s head with inhuman ferocity, and then slowly carving his scythe through its nonexistent neck as its yellow eyes blinked rapidly and its mouth gaped open, exposing row upon row of needle-pointed teeth. The body dropped to the ground, and he stared into the thing’s dead eyes before flinging its head up and over the trees toward the house.

  Killing the imp had done nothing to satiate his need for vengeance.

  Gone. Gone. Gone.

  No one could have survived that fire.

  He dropped to his knees in the blackness, his heart still pounding an unsustainable tempo against his ribs, and threw back his head, staring up through the canopy of trees at the dark sky. His chest and shoulders heaved with each breath he dragged into his seared lungs. Letting his weapon clatter to the ground, he closed his eyes and pulled in another shuddering breath before exhaling an anguished scream.

  He’d failed again.

  Failed another woman he…loved. She’d broken the stone walls around his heart, and now she was gone, stolen from him by a death so horrific he couldn’t even allow himself to picture it. And Ruth? His own loss was more than he could bear. His friend’s loss was beyond comprehension: a lover and a child.

  “No. No. No. No. NO! NO! NO!” he chanted into the steely darkness like a mantra. The only other sound was the occasional pop of a beam or framing board crackling behind him. There were no signs of life. No rodents or other animals scurried around. Every living thing had vanished around the perimeter of the house and grounds. Even the imps.

  A spark lit in the back of his mind. If the women were dead, where were their souls? He walked across the still glowing remains of the house to where the living room had once been and placed his palms against the charred debris. Then he did the one thing he’d refused to do for more than a century.

  He prayed.

  He begged whoever would listen that he could at least take them to Purgatory. The smell of his flesh burning didn’t deter him. He reached into the steaming rubble with his reaper senses as well as his bare hands, searching and grasping for their souls. After several moments with no success, he stood, his palms smoldering.

  Nothing.

  Of course not.

  How had the creatures breached the circle of protection? He’d trusted Nate’s magic and this had been his reward: death and destruction. He was a pawn in a game he was beyond sick and tired of playing. For the briefest of moments, he’d allowed himself to think…to hope…

  But that didn’t matter now.

  It was over.

  Kylen pushed himself to his feet and collected his weapon.

  Olivia had believed faith would save him.

  He now knew that nothing could save him.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Maeve landed in the hospital chapel and carried Ruth through the corridors, searching for someone, anyone, to help her. When a staff member finally spotted them, he quickly activated some sort of emergency code that brought an army of personnel down upon them. Maeve was relieved of her burden and pushed to the background as they raced away with Ruth on a gurney. She followed them and was pummeled with questions en route.

  She did her best to answer their queries and weave a believable story, but she was less than confident of her fiction. Ruth needed Deacon. Healing energy from him or one of the others was the only thing that would reliably save her.

  The seriousness of Ruth’s condition came crashing down on her as she watched the staff start a blood transfusion, which was a Band-Aid at best.

  “She’s pregnant.” Maeve blurted.

  “How far along is she?” one of the doctors asked.

  “Six weeks?” Maeve guessed.

  The sight of Ruth’s stark-white pallor and lifeless body sent a tremor through Maeve. She prayed for a miracle. She prayed that somehow, someway, both Ruth and the life inside her would be spared.

  The alternative was unbearable.

  * * *

  Maeve slipped out of the room in the bustle of activity as they worked to stabilize Ruth. She made her way back to the chapel so that she could flash away from the eyes of civilians. She needed to find Deacon. Then Kylen.

  She’d lost not one, but two people on her watch. So much for home-front duty being easy.

  What a FUBAR situation.

  For starters, she would flash downtown to the nest where she’d met Nate a few days ago. That area was a hotbed of demon activity, so hopefully the reapers wouldn’t be far. Adrenaline coursed through her veins, amping her back into a reaping machine. She was more than ready to slice and dice, and at this point, all she needed was a suitable target. She crossed the threshold back into the chapel, intent on her mission. Her jaw dropped open.

  Deacon was just inside the doorway of the chapel, an unconscious Nate in his arms.

  “What the hell is going on?” Maeve canvassed the room for danger, cautious as she approached the two men.

  “I don’t know. He collapsed while he was muttering some nonsense about Ruth.”

  “Did you juice him?”

  “Not yet. No time. I brought him straight here. Are you up to it? We can do it together before we get the normals involved.”

  Maeve hesitated. She’d only ever shared her energy one time…and it had ended in disaster. It was the real reason why she hadn’t tried to juice Ruth. Her energy was poison. Her brother’s face still haunted her. He had died during their training. There had been a freak accident, and she should have been able t
o heal him—quick and easy—instead, her light had somehow consumed his, draining him to the point of no return. It was the first, and last, time she’d tried to share her energy.

  “Maeve!” Deacon demanded, pulling her back to the here and now. “You have to help me with him. He’s too far gone for me to heal him myself.”

  “But he’s human.”

  “He’s more than human. He can take it. He needs it, Maeve.”

  She weighed her options. Deny her boss and possibly kill Nate or tell the truth and expose her weakness. It shouldn’t be such a difficult decision. She knew the right choice…so why wasn’t she making it?

  “My light is poisoned,” she finally said.

  “What?”

  “My energy might kill him. It’s killed before. Tell me what you want me to do.”

  Deacon scrutinized her with an intensity that burned through her, yet she couldn’t look away. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. This was on him. She’d admitted to her fault, and he alone would be responsible for the consequences of his decision.

  Nate’s body grew rigid and began to seize. Deacon lowered him to the floor and the palms of his hands began to glow and radiate green healing energy, which he pushed through Nate’s sternum. Nate’s seizure grew more violent instead of less, and he thrashed and heaved up from the floor. His body rejected Deacon’s light, hurling it into the ether. All that was left was a white aura.

  Without warning, Maeve’s body responded to the vacuum of energy, humming and itching along her receptors as it searched for an exit. She felt like her body would fly apart into a million little pieces.

  Against her will, energy leaked from her fingertips and streaked toward Nate’s lifeless body. Upon impact his chest rose, lifting his torso off the ground. Maeve held him there with her tether of energy for several long moments, her power flooding into him without her consent. She was helpless to stop what was happening, helpless to detach from him.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t want to kill him, but she couldn’t make it stop.

  Once he gathered himself, Deacon sprang to his feet and tackled Maeve to the ground, breaking the link. Maeve lay exhausted and powerless on the floor.