Reaping Willow

by D. N. Hoxa

  After his drugs. The asshole thought I was after his drugs?

  No point in regrets now. I grabbed another one of my knives from my waistband and showed it to him. The smile didn’t slip, even though the moonlight and the lights around us enabled him to see what it was made of.

  “So what are you, a hunter? Do you get off on this kind of thing?” he asked.

  “I prefer reaper, actually.” It just had a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Because that’s what I did. I reaped the souls of his kind. My father, on the other hand, had always preferred trapper, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Oh, little girl. You just made my goddamn year,” he said and charged me. Looked like the small talk was over. I had what I needed anyway. He’d had no clue who I was or what I did before we made it to the roof. Phew, what a relief.

  By the time he was in front of me again, I had two knives in hand. I swung them just like my father had taught me, like I’d done so many times before. I cut his arms and heard his scream and used it to fuel my rage. He sounded like you imagine hell would sound because that was exactly where he was from. A demon, straight from the fiery pits reigned over by the devil himself, come to earth to do as much damage as he could. Who knew how many lives he’d taken. Who knew how many more he’d ruined.

  His reign ended now.

  He was stronger than me, saw better than me, heard better, but I was faster. It had always been my advantage. All demons I’d met and killed were so used to having the upper hand that they never expected me to best them in a fight. Me, a blonde girl with a baby face who didn’t look like she could hurt a fly. Well, I wouldn’t hurt a fly, but I would kill demons until my dying breath.

  We fought for a few more minutes, until his blood was smeared all over his yellow tank top and leather pants. Blood loss made his kind weak because he couldn’t produce his own. The body he was using was probably long dead, and to keep it going, this particular kind of demon needed to suck the life force out of an actual human through sexual pleasure. People called them incubi, and they were the most common demons in the world. There were others who kept going by drinking people’s blood. They’re known as vampires. Yes, they’re real. Rare, but real, and I’m not sure about garlic, but they definitely cannot be out in the sun. Silver doesn’t hurt them. In fact, nothing could hurt any demon—except for the bones of their own kind.

  Others had to eat human flesh once a month if they wanted to remain on earth—ghouls. Basically zombies, except brains weren’t the only thing they craved. They were the hardest to track down because they didn’t like crowds, mostly kept to themselves and stayed away from things that attracted attention.

  And last but not least—shape-shifters, who had to consume some part of someone’s body so they could take their shape whenever they damn well pleased. It made finding them almost impossible.

  They were all different in their ways, but all demons had two things in common: they were demons, and they healed at an incredible rate.

  The sad news is, there were things far worse than even them that walked the earth.

  When I stabbed this particular demon in the gut with the bones of his own kind, he finally acknowledged that just because he could make a woman scream in pleasure and then rip pieces of her soul through those screams, that, in fact, did not make him better in a fight. I smiled as I pulled the knife back and then stabbed him right in the heart. I saw the—

  How does that make you feel, Willow?

  Goddamn shrink! If I could kick her in the face, I would. Repeatedly. Because I lied—she didn’t annoy me only some times. She annoyed me most times.

  It makes me feel like a million bucks! I replied.

  Anyway, I saw the horror in the demon’s eyes and relished in the scream that left his disintegrating lips for the two seconds I heard it. That was the business with killing demons. They turned into black ashes pretty quickly, and Yellow Tank Top was no different. I let go of my body and hit the concrete of the rooftop floor on my back with a smile on my face.

  Yellow Tank Top was gone. One less evil in this fucked up world. One more night of victory for me.

  Little did I know then that those would become much fewer and farther between.

  Chapter Two

  If you ask me, there are many kinds of daddy issues loose in the world, like the classic, where the father up and leaves the wife and kids, not only alone, but forever scarred somewhere deep inside nobody can see.

  Or the other, where the father is always there, has the children’s back through it all, and in turn makes them weak. Or weaker. They never learn to fend for themselves or to fucking deal with their own problems, and when there’s no more daddy to run to with their problems, the children break down badly. I’ve seen it happen countless times.

  But then there’s another issue I haven’t come across before—mine. I don’t really know if enough people have it to give it its own category, so I haven’t put a label on it. This one’s the one where the father asks far too much of his young, clueless daughter, keeps secrets like they’re the air he breathes, makes no sense whatsoever in his demands, and then one day just kills himself without explanation because why the fuck not?

  Far away was the day when I’d be over the whole ordeal, but I still looked forward to it every second.

  Still, I was thankful to him for three things: for teaching me to fight, for opening my eyes to the real world, and for leaving me his four bone knives. And…that’s pretty much it.

  Treat Yourself was the name of the small cake shop Cece Mathers owned, aka my real job, the one that paid the bills. It was a nice job because cake. I got to eat every time I felt like it, and I always felt like it. Just the benefits of never going to college, I guess.

  “There she is,” said Cece with her annoying voice when I walked into the shop, five minutes early. Not that I was trying to avoid my mother and her boyfriend George or anything, but she’d left twenty-two voice mails on my cell, so I was not looking forward to our next conversation.

  “Morning, Cece,” I said, not bothering to hide how bored I was already. If it wasn’t for the free cake, there was no way I’d have held that job for the tenth month in a row.

  “You look like shit. Is that a new bruise?”

  “You noticed!” I said, my voice high pitched as I batted my lashes at her. I was aware that I had a new bruise. In fact, several new bruises but only one that she could see—on the left side of my face, right under my eye from when the demon hit me. She couldn’t see the bruises around my neck from when he’d almost killed me, thinking I was after his drugs. I’d worn a turtleneck even though it was April, just to keep her from asking questions.

  “You should stop taking self-defense classes, honey. Fighting’s just not up your alley,” she said, her fake pity a slap to my face. I’d told her I took classes to get her off my back because this wasn’t the first time I’d come to work with bruises. I told my mom the same lie, too.

  “Right,” I mumbled because I knew that no matter what I said, it was just going to loosen her tongue more. Instead, I slipped through the door behind the counter and into the back room to get the mop. We were going to open soon, and I’d rather mop floors than talk to her. She’d be out of my hair in just a few more minutes. She came to the shop bright and early, depending on the orders for the day. She sold cakes on the go, too, but her business relied on orders, and she did everything herself. I could never understand why, but she wouldn’t even let me into her kitchen when she baked, and I was her only employee.

  “You know they make makeup for that sort of thing, right?” she insisted while I mopped the black and white tiles of the shop and rearranged the three tables and six chairs nobody ever used. I don’t know why she even put them there, but I wasn’t eager to ask.

  “Yes, Cece, I’m aware,” I snapped back.

  “It’s just that I don’t want my customers getting bad vibes when they come in here, dear.” She had her arms folded in front of her and looked at me
like she was begging me to say something—anything so she could fire me. She wanted to but she’d hate to have to find another employee she trusted with her money. And I wasn’t exactly in the mood to go job hunting again. So…

  “Then I’ll put some makeup on before opening,” I made myself say. How’s that for an effort to keep my shitty job? I freaking nailed it, if you asked me.

  “Good girl,” said Cece, equal parts annoyed and relieved. “Anyway, I gotta leave right away.” She stopped in front of the small mirror behind the counter to check her bright pink lipstick and to run her fingers through her ash blonde hair that always seemed to be perfectly styled even though she sometimes started work at two in the morning. “All the orders are in the back, and I made fresh lemon and coffee cake for the front.”

  The cakes in the front rarely sold. Not too many people liked to buy cake on the go, it seemed, or maybe it had something to do with the shitty location of the shop. It was at a corner of a not so busy street in Midtown, and the sign of the law office upstairs almost hid Cece’s sign completely. She refused to spend money to buy some stickers for the front windows, so that was that.

  It worked to my benefit, though. All the cakes nobody bought I got to eat, so it was a win-win for me.

  “All right, see you later,” I said without looking at her, putting the mop away. Now, I’d have to bring the cakes from the back to the front refrigerators below the counter, and my job would pretty much be done until people came by for their orders.

  “Don’t forget the foundation!” she called as she shamelessly adjusted her boobs up to the top of her V-necked dress and stepped outside. A fifty-three-year-old woman and she still had more energy than me. She was a good person, which was the reason I stuck around and put up with her shit. Even though she tried so hard to come off cold and conceited, her heart was in the right place.

  Perhaps my lack of energy that morning had something to do with the demon last night. My sixteenth kill and I was damn proud of it. If Dad could see me now, he’d be proud of me, too. Or he’d tell me that I wasn’t ready and that I was putting myself in danger by thinking that I was.

  And I’d probably send him to hell if he wasn’t already there for bailing on us. Never mind the damage he did to me, but Mom? That woman had more issues than the United States government. His suicide had left her weak, paranoid, helpless. She refused to let me go to college, for God’s sake, let alone leave the house when I turned eighteen. I thought that she’d change when George came into the picture two years ago. I thought she’d want her own space with her boyfriend but no such luck.

  I packed my bags to leave once. I just wanted out of that apartment, out of New York for good. There were demons in other cities, weren’t there? I could do my reaping there. Or trapping, like my father said, because you can’t really kill a demon—you just kill the bodies they inhabit and trap them back in hell.

  But before I left that morning, I could see it in my mother’s eyes as clear as day: if I left, she was going to hurt herself—or try to. I couldn’t risk that, not after Dad. You might think that I was crazy, that I was just as paranoid as she was, but I always had a sense for that kind of thing. I could always read people. I could sense their energy in the general sense—like, I could sense if someone was good, bad, or a demon. A gift and a curse at the same time.

  The first time I told my father this was when I was eleven. That night, my whole life changed. Our relationship changed from a normal father-daughter relationship to something…strange. I tried to tell myself that I imagined it, but ever since that night, I felt like my father hated me for speaking those words. For telling him that I thought our math teacher, Mr. Godwin, was a bad man and that he’d done bad things. He despised me for being the way I was, and though he’d never said anything to my face, I saw it in the way he looked at me. I felt it in the way he pushed me—first to run and then to train and then to understand. By the time I was fourteen, I knew about demons, and I could point them out in Central Park where he took me almost every evening for this purpose only. He never told me how he knew what he knew, just that he did. He never told me who he was. Who he really was. My father was a stranger to me, and he’d died that way, too. I knew more about my neighbors than I did about him, and my mother knew even less.

  I was sitting behind the counter, contemplating if tonight was a good night to sneak into the gym near my apartment where I trained a few times a week, when the door opened and the bell above it clinked that annoying sound. The first customer was already here, and I’d only put the Open sign up ten minutes ago.

  The guy walked in like he’d been there before, looking everywhere but at me. I’d worked for Cece for the past ten months, and I was very good with faces. I’d have known if he’d been there before and not only because his face would have been too boringly perfect if not for the slight crook of his nose. Shivers washed down my back as he approached me, his eyes on the refrigerators. For just a short, tiny second, I was actually glad Cece had made me wear makeup. The second passed fast, though, because it didn’t take a genius to figure out that there was something wrong with this guy. It just took me.

  “Uh…can I help you?” I asked, analyzing every movement of his body. He looked to be no older than me. Tattoos covered every inch of his right arm, but the biggest one was that of a snake that went on up under the short sleeve of his shirt. If he pulled it up just a bit, I bet the snake’s head was just as masterfully tattooed as the rest of its body. His shoulders were slightly hunched. He didn’t look like he worked out, but he was ripped under the baggy shirt. Maybe a swimmer? His torn sneakers and his disheveled, light brown hair said he didn’t much care about his appearance. He didn’t need to, if we were being honest. I bet the ladies swooned in his presence, torn sneakers or not.

  And I cannot believe I used the word swoon.

  His eyes, though—they were his best feature, if I had to choose. They were blue but not the ordinary kind of blue. Not my kind of blue. His were icy, almost like his irises had been frozen, which felt wrong. He felt wrong—I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  “Yes, actually,” he said and finally looked at me. I blamed his frozen eyes for the ice-cold chill down my back. “I’m not really into cake, so I’m not sure which one of these is best. Can you pick one for me?”

  His voice was rough, almost like he didn’t spend too much time talking.

  I raised my brows. “If you’re not into cakes, why come to a cake shop?” Maybe that’s what felt wrong about him. Who in the world doesn’t like cake?

  “Because I’m craving something sweet.” Holy hell. Was it just me or did his eyes melt a little when he said that?

  “Could have gotten a candy bar at the grocery store,” I said, a tad bit breathless.

  He smiled, showing me his teeth, which didn’t help my situation. They weren’t perfect—his canines were more pointy than square—but for some reason they just added to his appeal. If I could just figure out why he felt the way he felt to me, I was going to throw a fucking party.

  “I’m sorry, is trying to push customers away your motto or something?”

  “Is lying yours?” I asked. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was lying, but he had to be; otherwise I wouldn’t have this uneasy feeling about him.

  Raising his hands, he sighed. “Fine, you caught me.” He turned toward the windows to look outside for just a second. “I’m trying to get away from someone, and this was the first shop on my way.”

  Now that sounded much more honest. I smiled. “In that case, you’re going to try our cherry chocolate cake and not because it’s the most expensive one we’ve got.”

  He laughed like he really thought I was funny, and believe it or not, I found myself smiling. Just a stupid grin plastered all over my face like a freaking teenager.

  “Cherry chocolate it is,” he said.

  Clearing my throat, I got to work to get him his cake.

  “You don’t have a name tag,” he said in wonder.
>
  “I don’t,” I confirmed.

  “Do you have a name?”

  This time, I laughed. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  I couldn’t believe my eyes, but the guy blushed. He actually blushed. Even babies weren’t cuter than he looked at that moment, which for some reason made me say: “It’s Willow.”

  “Jeez, I don’t think I’ve ever had more trouble getting a girl’s name before,” he said in a whisper, then cleared his throat. “Well, Willow, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Adrian Ward.” He held out his hand for me to shake. And like a fool, I did.

  The second I touched his skin, it was like lightning struck somewhere in the distance. I knew exactly why he felt wrong, and I was a fool for not seeing it before.

  Remember when I said that I had this blessing/curse thing that enabled me to kind of feel a person—or demon—and know what their deal was? I could tell if they were good or bad, at least in the general sense.

  Well, with this guy, I got nothing. No feeling of good or evil hanging onto his skin, no glowing or dark aura surrounding his frame, no nothing—just confusion, like my head might start aching if I focused on it for too long. I took my hand back as fast as I could, which made him widen his eyes in surprise. I put the box with his cake in front of him and told him the price.

  “Is everything all right?” he said instead.

  No, everything was not all right. In fact, nothing was all right because everyone had something—some kind of a feeling clinging to them—and he didn’t. I had no idea what to make of it because this had never happened to me before, but it couldn’t be anything good, could it? He wasn’t a demon, that much I could tell from the eyes alone. So what the hell was his deal?

  “Yes, everything’s just peachy. The money?” My voice was ice cold, only because I wanted him to get out of here as soon as possible.

  “Okay,” he said in a breath and took out his wallet, which wasn’t in any better shape than his sneakers. Seriously, the black leather had almost turned completely white.