Reap & Repent (5 page)

“Are all of them reapers?”

“Yes, there are a lot of different races represented down here. I can give you a crash course later. But stay quiet for now—Rashnu hates disrespect.”

Ruth zipped her lip, and they shuffled forward again. Deacon was up to bat. Ruth tried to look small and insignificant behind him, which was not much of a stretch. Rashnu bored a hole through Deacon, and then she felt his gaze settle on her.

“Forward!” the angel bellowed.

She was frozen in place. Deacon hesitated for a second then swung her around in front of him.

Lamb to the slaughter. Thanks.

“Just when I thought it was going to be another boring day in Purgatory.” Rashnu scowled. “What do we have here? Speak, reaper. Name yourself.”

Ruth wasn’t sure if he was asking her or Deacon, since she didn’t think she qualified as a card-carrying reaper yet. Deacon gave her a nudge in the ribs, encouraging her to answer.

“Ru… Ruth,” she stuttered.

“Well, RuRuth, why are you presenting yourself in Purgatory this day? This is very unusual. I think Dante was the last to cross through here uninvited and that was…a while ago.” Rashnu glowered. “We don’t do visitors. And you don’t appear quite suicidal.” Rashnu arched an eyebrow and threw a withering glance at Deacon.

“I brought her. She’s a reaper, but she’s untrained. She grew up without the proper guidance. I’m…mentoring her. I brought you her father today for processing. He’s a sleeper—his soul has been untethered for fifteen years.” Deacon didn’t bow before the angel, but he did cast his eyes downward in an act of submission.

Rashnu seemed to consider his options as the people—and creatures—behind them shuffled, growing agitated by the delay. One look from Rashnu, and they all stopped in their tracks. Ruth didn’t know what power the angel held over them, but even the insane-looking creatures obviously had a healthy respect for him that seemed a lot like fear.

How some of those things could fear anything considering how terrifying they looked themselves, she had no idea. She certainly didn’t want to incur the wrath of Rashnu, though, or any of the rest of them for that matter. Mostly, she wanted to go home.

Like, now.

Rashnu motioned Deacon forward and her father’s soul began to purge from him. For a brief moment, her father reformed before Rashnu. The angel waved a glowing blue hand at him for a little longer than he had with previous customers, and then her father streamed up and away, toward a chimney in the center of the station. Her father disappeared into the “good” chimney, if appearances could be trusted.

Deacon fell to his knees and a sharp gasp sounded from the line of reapers waiting behind them. Trying to recover, he did a face plant instead. Realizing that he needed a hand, she bent to help him.

“Are you okay?” she asked, trying to get her weight under his shoulders and ease him to his feet.

“The latent ones are always the toughest.” He smiled weakly.

Rashnu looked as if he was ready to smite them both to dust at any moment. He was obviously done with the drama. And frankly, Ruth was, too. She didn’t like having all of those creepy crawlies at her back, and her spine tingled at the thought of them. The air felt thick and dangerous.

“Now…about this
new
reaper.” Rashnu waved his hand and the people—and things—in line turned in unison, making their way to the other end of the station, leaving them alone before him.

“So, Deacon, you are offering to mentor the girl?”

Deacon got to his feet and gave Rashnu a long look before nodding what seemed to be a rather reluctant
yes.

“Very well. This is, of course, not standard procedure, but if you’re willing to take responsibility for her and her actions for the entirety of her training, I’ll approve it. There won’t be another official training session until next summer since everyone has been occupied with…activities. However…she is completely in your charge. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Come, Ruth. You will not receive your scythe until you’ve proven that your training is complete. If Deacon continues to fulfill his duties and exterminate his territory of its current
visitors,
you won’t be needed for hunting demons anytime soon. It will be up to Deacon to determine when your training is complete.”

Deacon placed his hand on the small of her back and urged her forward, toward Rashnu. She felt tiny next to the angel as he towered over her. He was much taller than Deacon and the ridiculous purple robe didn’t make him any less imposing. His dark hair was shoulder length and wavy, and his face was so smooth and flawless.

“Well, Ruth, let’s see what you’ve got.” He took her face between his palms and tilted her head upward, his green eyes locking on to hers. His gaze bore into her as his palms grew warm against her face, and she watched as a white radiance began to envelop her. Everything faded away except for her and Rashnu, and try as she might, she couldn’t break the hold his gaze had upon her.

Memories flipped through her head as if he was turning pages in her mind, rewinding her personal history one chapter at a time. Many of them she’d
forgotten—some were good, some were bad, but all were familiar once they floated to the surface, retrieved from the closet of her mind. Familiar, that is, until a different reel began to play.

One that wasn’t her own.

Abruptly, Rashnu detached from her and stepped back a pace. His eyes had gone large and round with wonder, but they quickly narrowed and his surprise was replaced with what appeared to be concern.

“Well?” Deacon asked.

“Interesting.” He aimed an inscrutable glance at Deacon. “Good luck.”

Rashnu raised his robes off the floor a few inches and climbed the short set of stairs back onto his raised podium. He was just the sort of guy who enjoyed lording over people. Or reapers, as the case might be.

Confusion shot through her as she tried to shake the images he’d pulled through her conscience. Especially the ones that weren’t hers.

So much for not being able to read minds.

Had Deacon lied to her about that or was Rashnu the only one who could do it?

She wasn’t surprised by the angel’s reaction. He wasn’t the first seer to be repelled by her. When she was sixteen, she’d gone to a tarot card reader in the hopes of getting some good news about her love life after yet another failed boyfriend attempt. Carlos Sanchez, with his mustard aura and anger issues…so not the one. Again.

It had gotten so bad that she’d nearly given up because she couldn’t help judging boys based on their auras, which eliminated about 99 percent of the boys she met. Even if they made it past the initial meet and greet and things progressed, she could always tell when they were trying to deceive her with promises and lies, which, with teenage boys, turned out to be often.

The more tangled their lies became, the more swirled and muddied their auras grew, until she bailed in frustration. She would have given anything to turn off her aura vision and be oblivious, just like the rest of her freshmen class.

The tarot reader had taken Ruth’s money, shuffled her cards and then promptly pronounced the session to be at an end when the Death card was the first to appear. Ruth wasn’t a card reader, but she knew the Grim Reaper when she saw him. Or so she’d thought.

As she hurried Ruth out the door, the woman had been visibly shaken, and she’d taken care not to touch her client. The encounter had confirmed the suspicions that had kept Ruth up at night throughout the years. Something was very, very wrong with her.

And now? Now a fierce and feared supernatural beastie was giving her the brush-off? Really?

Deacon took her hand and pulled her toward the monolith where they’d arrived. She didn’t know what the plan was, but she was all for a quick exit.

“That was fun.” Kylen fell in step beside them.

“Ya think?” Deacon replied.

“Hey, man, just makin’ conversation here. We never talk anymore. So what’s the story with Snow White here? She a freelancer? I wouldn’t mind teaching her a thing or two.” Kylen winked lasciviously at Ruth.

She shuddered.

He looked human…but everything was a bit off about him. His movements were a little too jerky, his speech a little too staccato. He was the same height as Deacon, but his blond hair was nearly white, in stark contrast to his disturbing black eyes. His black pupils took up most of his ocular landscape—a thin ring of dark purple rimmed the outside edge of his pupil and another even thinner band of white shone at the outermost corners.

Creepy.

“Thanks for the concern, Kylen, but I’ve got it covered.” Deacon hurried Ruth toward the other end of the terminal.

“I’ll bet you do,” Kylen said, his eyes never leaving Ruth’s face. He winked again and laughed to himself as he walked away and faded into the crowd.

“What was that all about?”

“Later,” Deacon said, urging her along, his hand pushing against the small of her back. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

“Absolutely.”

As they passed through the crowd, Ruth was careful not to brush against any of the creatures. The one thing they all had in common was their complete lack of auras. Now that she actually wanted to read the people around her, she had nothing to go on, nada. It was less than reassuring. They stepped up to a large
stone monolith that resembled a scaled-down stone from Easter Island. Markings and unrecognizable symbols covered most of its smooth surface all the way around. The word
Sanskrit
popped into her mind.

“Grab on,” Deacon said, curling an arm around her waist.

When she was firmly in his grasp, he slapped a hand on the marker and everything grew swimmy around her again. They zoomed back up from Purgatory, landing smack in front of her father’s grave.

* * *

Judging by the pitch-black sky, it was very late when they landed topside, but she was relieved to see something familiar again. Even if it was a cemetery. She bent over and lost the lunch she hadn’t had onto the ground beside the grave.

Motion sickness?

Deacon put a hand on her back and pushed happy juice into her.

“It gets easier.”

She didn’t know if that was more comforting or alarming. She also didn’t know if she even wanted to ever experience any of this again, let alone grow accustomed to it. He rubbed his hand across her back in slow circles.

“We need to get back,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her toward the car. “I need food, and it wouldn’t hurt you to eat, too.”

Her stomach still felt queasy after her vomiting episode, and food was the very last thing on her mind. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to kiss her again anytime soon.

As they headed to her Continental, Deacon reached for the keys. She handed them over without complaint. It had been a long, strange day, and she didn’t trust herself to get them back to the house in one piece. As he started the car, she noticed that the dash clock flashed 9:35 p.m. They’d been at the Purgatory way station for two hours.

I guess time flies when you’re having fun.

Chapter Six

Deacon was conflicted as he drove them home. Ruth had now officially been recognized as a reaper even if she was still in training. How had his life gotten so topsy-turvy in such a short time?

Now that she’d made it to and from Purgatory, things would change for her. Her powers, which had been mostly latent for all these years, would begin to activate. He swore to himself. It was the absolute worst time for Kylen to have surfaced.

Once, Kylen had been Deacon’s best friend and fellow reaper, but for the past century he had been possessed by a demon soul poacher. At least once a decade, Kylen’s demon showed up to taunt Deacon. He would carve a path of destruction all around him before falling off the radar again.

Deacon had done what he could to save Kylen, consulting with his superiors and finally a local coven to try to free his friend from the demon who held him. But the only way he could do that was if he found out the demon’s name…or, of course, killed its host.

As in beheaded him.

Demons could animate a human body as long as it still held some energy, but they wore out quickly. Only two things killed a reaper: completely depleting his or her energy, or decapitation.

Demons had figured out long ago that as long as they kept their reaper host fed
and
protected, they could ride him or her indefinitely. A reaper’s natural
Reiki energy would continue to heal his or her body from virtually any injury. Minus beheading, of course.

If Deacon hadn’t chased out the three Meridian demons himself, he would have sworn Kylen was to blame for the soul poaching in the area. Kylen was certainly capable of that level of carnage all on his own. He’d done it before through the years. Repeatedly. The difference this time was… Deacon suddenly had someone to lose.

And now that Kylen knew there was someone who might mean something to him… Deacon feared that he might endanger Ruth.

Something about the girl was compelling. She had no idea what she was in for, and since she had never been trained, her powers weren’t developed. He needed to keep Kylen as far away from her as possible. Kylen couldn’t hurt her in Purgatory, but topside…well, she was vulnerable.

How had this happened? Some reapers were born into their work, others trained for it if they exhibited latent supernatural abilities, including the ability to manipulate auras, travel the consecrated subway, and respond to the pull of the dead and dying. Still, the reaper pool was a tight-knit and closed society. Normals didn’t regularly fall into its waters or off the radar like Ruth apparently had. Regardless, there were damn few female reapers. Most women with a talent for reaping were trained as valkyries, a prestigious and precarious job. They could carry many more souls than the average reaper, and as a result were constantly summoned to one battlefield after another.

No rest for the weary.

There were millions of reapers scattered across earth, each manning their own little piece of the pie. Deacon worked a territory he’d claimed many years ago. He’d been drawn to the quiet and seclusion of Meridian…he’d had all the drama he wanted for a very long time after Kylen’s possession.