Dire (Reaper's Redemption Book 2)

by Thea Atkinson

  Callum put the cooler on the floor and stuck his hand out. "Not exactly a picnic," he said. "More of a cleaning party." He pumped the guy's hand twice before he planted his hands on his hips as though surveying the room. "I work for the fire department. I couldn't stand the thought that this place was not checked over when we took care of the fire. But everything seems okay. I guess abandoned crypts don't interest arsonists." He tried on a thready smile that didn't reach his eyes, but I hoped the guy wouldn't notice it.

  "Rory," the guy said. "And it's not abandoned anymore." It almost looked as though he was purposefully not paying attention to Sarah. But then, maybe I was being a little paranoid after everything that had happened. Fidgety, Gramp would call it. I could see Sarah from the corner of my eye, studying the guy's face as though she didn't see the resemblance we had mentioned at all.

  I took that as a good sign. Surely if he was a member of her family, someone who wanted to sacrifice her to raise some ancestral necromancer, bells would have gone off somewhere in her magical mojo.

  Callum let go of his hand and it didn't escape my notice that he swiped his palm against his jeans. "What do you mean not abandoned anymore?" .

  "I bought it," Rory said. "Apparently the town can't afford to restore it, and there's far too much history in the place to let it go. They were more than ready to give it up to a decent bidder."

  He looked me straight in the eye. "I'm sure I know you."

  My toe dug into the floor. The last thing I wanted to do was admit to him how he knew me. It was bad enough remembering the event let alone knowing that pretty much mentally accused him of being some the nefarious sorcerer.

  "The scooter accident," Callum said with all the casualness of an innocent introduction. Only he could make a scooter accident sound like a handshake over a cup of coffee. "You look well. I take it no concussion?"

  "Oh yes," Rory said with a look that reminded me of someone who had just bitten into something sour. "The accident."

  I couldn't do much more than nod. My ears were already buzzing badly enough from the magic still rippling through the air that I couldn't separate each different signal anymore. Whatever jolts of electricity went through me when Callum touched me, were drowned out in the searing shrieks of Nehkbet's residual magic. I wondered if my hearing would ever be the same.

  The guy crossed his arms over his chest, taking us in. "I'm turning the place into a museum," he said. "Cataloguing all of the history here, starting with the monks and nuns who built the place. Dyre has quite a history. It's pretty interesting once you dig into it."

  "I imagine," I said and only realized my tone was less than enthusiastic when Sarah elbowed me in the rib cage. I thought I could see the tip of the bone sticking out from baby's blanket. I remembered that she didn't have a chance to spell the skeletons and I thought I could read the regret of that on her face.

  No doubt we are all feeling the residual pull of magic and wanted to get out of there as soon as we could.

  That flat, blue-eyed gaze of Rory's fell on me and I thought there was something hard behind his expression that he was trying to hide with that bland smile.

  "Do you know much about the town?" he said. "Folks tell me it's a boring little spot with nothing interesting to uncover."

  I was about to argue, when the baby let go a loud shriek, saving me from saying anything foolish.

  Sarah nudged me again with her elbow. "We need to get little Nickie home. I think she's hungry."

  I didn't want to think about what little Nickie might want to eat. That last meal she'd had as the goddess, had been energy straight from my solar plexus. I still didn't feel quite right from it. And every time I looked at Callum, I remembered how vulnerable he'd appeared beneath the weight of the goddess's hunger. He still wore a haunted look and whenever he was close to me, he kept touching me like I could restore his energy.

  I wondered how long it would take before we both felt normal again. Baby or not, the infant had a goddess residing somewhere in her tissues and I wasn't sure how that would manifest. I just had to trust that everything would be okay.

  It was enough to make the exhaustion I was already feeling wear me to an even duller nub. I needed to get out of there if I wanted to find my equilibrium. We all did, and I was sure I made some ridiculous apology and then pushed past Rory without bothering to look back. We trooped down at the tunnel together, and I wasn't sure if the others even paid attention to the way the bones of the skeletons still lay where we had left them and that they had no doubt been noted as Rory picked his way down the same path to find us. He left each one of the candles lit in the sconces, and I figured if this place was his now, he could worry about putting them back out when he left.

  I didn't feel the least bit sorry to see the last of the place.

  Sarah went with Callum in his car to pick up formula, and I used the time alone to let the events of the past few hours soak themselves into my mind. I had a lot to think about, a lot to process. If I managed to get that done, I had to prepare Gramp for the possible new resident to his home.

  I kept telling myself everything would be okay. It had to be. I had to trust that whatever decision I had made in haste, had been the right one because I had obviously set myself on that same path years from now. Was I any smarter as an adult than I was now? I prayed so because whatever had brought about that last moment where I had elected to sacrifice my last reap in order to save an infant with the early vestiges of wings on her back, I might never know.

  I wasn't sure what I expected of Gramp, but it wasn't cold, controlled fury. I hadn't felt so divided from him in all my years there as I did in those moments. And I expected more of Sarah and Callum as they came in behind me and found me standing on one side of the pass-through counter and Gramp on the other. The two of them sidled past him into the living room where they were whispering together and left me alone to do the arguing with Gramp.

  Gramp didn't let them go by unnoticed, however. He pointed at each of them as his voice rose. "How could you all do such a thing?"

  I threw my arms up in the air. "What choice did I have? I had like three seconds to decide."

  "There are always choices, Ayla," he said and my scalp prickled in response.

  Always choices. That's what I had said to Azrael. It's what I kept saying to Azrael. I didn't like having it thrown back at me. All I knew was we had found a way to neutralize the goddess. Whatever was dangerous about her was gone and we were safe again. She was nothing more terrible than a squalling, helpless thing spitting up on her blankie. For the hundredth time, I stole a look at her beneath my lids because I didn't want anyone to know I was peeking.

  The baby was lying on the sofa. She was pink and pudgy and completely wingless. I wasn't sure why that surprised me, and I wasn't sure why I was disappointed. But there she was. A beautiful baby. The only strange thing about her was the gold coloured eyes that must have been a remnant of the goddess herself.

  "We have to give her up," Gramp said and tapped his foot on the floor as though he had made a decision.

  "What do you mean give her up?"

  He looked at me for a long moment before I realized what he was saying.

  "No," I said, incensed he would even consider it. "You can't give her to social services."

  "We certainly can't keep her," he said. "She isn't a stray kitten, Ayla."

  "But you can't give her to social services either," Callum said, a sudden voice of reason in the chaos of the moment. I gave him a grateful smile.

  "She's a god," he said.

  "Demi-god," Gramp corrected. "If she's anything, she's a half god." He sounded annoyed but at least he wasn't saying she had to go. It was a start. I knew he'd give in. His heart was too soft. Callum couldn't know it though, and he pressed the subject home quite nicely.

  "Well, she sure isn't just a human baby. We have no idea what's going to happen with her. We have no idea if she's even safe or if anyone is safe around her."

  Sarah poked her
head around the kitchen door frame, clutching a large bag of chips and brandishing it at us as though it was an extension of the finger that pointed at us.

  "He might be right," she said, turning her eye to Gramp. "We have no idea what we did back there. We don't know what the result will be."

  Gramp let go a heavy sigh. "We'll keep her then. For a little while." He glared at me, defeated but unwilling it seemed to give in. "But she stays in your room. And you two look after her. I've done my tour of duty."

  He spun on his heel to head to the kitchen, and I was pretty sure I heard him curse under his breath as he went to the fridge and dug out an ale. A pretty good indication of how he was feeling, since the strongest thing I'd ever seen him drink was dark chocolate cocoa.

  "I'm not sure what this all means," Sarah said sitting down next to the baby on the sofa and sticking her pinky finger in between the rosebud lips. A wet smacking sound accompanied that of Sarah's crunching on chips.

  After a while, she sighed. "At least the worst is over. I never wanted to use my powers to do what I just did today." She pressed her lips into a thin line as she looked up at me. "It's always been about using my power for protection. Never to do harm. Never to combat the natural order of things."

  Even as she said these things, I thought of Azrael. I wondered how he would feel about her admission. He'd always been so insistent she was an abomination who had no rights in the human world. I felt more than proud of her in that moment and wished he could be around hear it.

  "But I don't see how this can be a bad thing," she said, lifting the baby from the sofa and lying her against her shoulder. I could hear little Nickie making suckling sounds on Sarah's neck.

  "I can see your uncomfortable with it all, Ayla," she said. "But you're the one that chose this route, and what could be more innocent than a babe? How can bringing this little thing back to life be a problem?"

  I supposed she was right. What could a baby do after all. Witness the helplessness with which the tiny thing clung to her, the ever-increasing suckling sounds as they grew more insistent. As a goddess, Nickie had power, but as an infant, about the only thing she could do on her own power was squall and wet herself. Harmless. Perfectly harmless.

  "I think this little thing is going to give me a hickey," Sarah said and passed her into Callum's arms.

  She wiped her hands down along her shirt like Pilate washing his hands clean and headed out into the hallway, muttering something about getting the cooler off the step before a raccoon decided to have a picnic with it. I knew her better than to think she was being conscientious. I had the feeling she figured the baby was about to let go a full lung full of screams and wanted nothing to do with it.

  Sure enough, Sarah had made it as far as the pass-through counter when Nickie let loose a holler loud enough to curdle milk. Sarah shot a victorious look back at me over her shoulder.

  Trying to swallow the lump of emotion sticking in my throat, I watched as Callum jostled the infant up and down. His eyes met mine over the fuzz-covered head and he smiled. He looked so content, and so perfectly at peace even amid the shrieks and bawling, I couldn't help returning his smile.

  Maybe everything was going to be alright after all.

  I was still smiling stupidly and blissfully hopeful when Sarah staggered back into the living room. The cooler dangled from her hand.

  Something was wrong. I started for her on instinct, but she held up her hand to hold me back. Whatever it was, she didn't want me anywhere near her. She had that look on her face again, that looked like she was about to run. She looked like she was having a hard time swallowing. She reached out with one arm to place her palm against the wall and I noticed there was something between two of her fingers.

  "What is it," I said. "What's wrong?"

  I thought she wanted to speak, but it was obvious she couldn't gather the ability to do so without breaking down. I looked sideways at Callum and saw that he had stuck his pinky finger into Nickie's mouth and she was sucking on it fiercely. Even he knew something was wrong.

  I reached my arms out to her, the way someone might do to someone who was about to jump off a ledge.

  "It's alright, Sarah," I said. "Whatever it is, it's alright."

  She shook her head and dropped the cooler onto the floor. The cover snapped open and a tiny yellow wing flopped out onto the carpet. She stared at it for a long moment before she caught my gaze.

  "It's over," she said and her voice sounded so unlike her, I had to cock my head to be sure she had really spoken. "Finally over."

  She held up a card for us both to see. Without a word, she flipped it over to show us the face of it. A tarot card of a skeleton riding a white horse. I was still trying to work through what it meant and why she was showing it to us when Callum spoke.

  "A tarot card?" he said.

  "Not just any tarot card," she said and her voice broke on the last word. "The death card."

  She sank down onto her knees and reached for the wing that had slipped from the cooler. She tucked it almost lovingly back into the belly of the box then caught my eye. She seemed to be waiting for me to make a connection I didn't have the ends to, and when I didn't, a ghost-like smile played across her face.

  "My family's calling card."

  Then I knew. Her family had found her. I found myself wondering if it wasn't Rory after all, despite her insistence that she had no relatives that so closely resembled her, and then I realized it didn't matter. Not right then. Because whether it had come from him or a stranger, what would come next was most definitely going to be a full out war, and the game would be on.

  <<<>>>

  Want to see what creature Ayla meets next?

  Pick up book 3

  <<<>>>

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  WHO IS THIS THEA CHICK? Thea writes what she calls left-of-mainstream fiction at her desk in Nova Scotia with her black lab at her feet and miniature gargoyles to protect the space and the muse. She always has a cup of tea going or going cold. No matter what genre she writes in, it's always slightly off kilter from the normal (mainstream) offering.

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