Reaper II: Neophyte (4 page)

“Please don’t hurt me!” He cried.

Looking at my right hand, I willed my claws to grow shorter and was pleased to see that the second skin seemed to respond to my wishes.

My fingernails were again as long as fork tines, then cat’s claws…then much like my own fingers.

“Your victims…did
they
beg for mercy?” I asked him, my smile one of pure menace. “Did
their
pleas fall on deaf ears?”

Two long slender spikes of the glistening black organic material were now, at my will, growing from the back of my hands, like scalpels at first, then as long as bread knives.

They looked like features found on a carnivorous insect and I knew they would be as sharp as razors since I willed them to be that way.

I seemed able to transform through my willpower, through imagination alone.

The Dark Thing seemed content to respond to my silent commands…

“Tell me,” I demanded, “Did they beg for their lives just as you’re doing now?”

I willed the weapon of my left hand to grow strong and hard as I punched into the flesh of his shoulder, burrowing deep with the jagged spike, pinning him against the brick wall.

“
Did they
?” I demanded.

A scream of agony was his only answer.

I was pleased.

As I twisted the spikes, torturing him, his shrieks of torment were like so much music…

So much sweet, sweeping music.

The Dark Thing, sustained by my victim’s anguish, fed greedily on his readily available blood.

Images of his past conquests flooded my mind and I was surprised to see that, despite his young age, he had scores of victims.

Even more victims than the other two who had fallen this night by my hand.

“Please…God…don’t…” His young face streaked with tears and his terrified eyes, he begged me not to kill him.

I thought of his young age and then I thought of my own.

Who was the greater evil at this point—him or me?

I had killed two killers tonight.

I was about to kill another.

For all that he had done, to me – to countless others – did he deserve to die?

I felt so.

At the very core of my soul, there was a sense that it was the right thing to do.

There was no point in prolonging this drama.

His screams might have drawn the attention of Good Samaritans who may have called the police.

With the further outpouring of his blood came the knowledge of his crimes and those terrible secrets filled me with fury.

It was shocking. Baby Boy was only a few years older than I was, yet so many innocents had died at his hands.

So many.

“All of the things that you have done…they’re
beyond
evil.” I seethed, twisting the blade of my hand in his shoulder.

He howled with pain. “Please…”

“End of the show, fucker. It’s curtains for you.”

I pulled my left hand out of his shoulder and, crossing the two blades under his chin, much like a lethal pair of scissors, I drew my forearms apart and up cutting deep through his neck, turning him into a human Pez dispenser.

His remaining blood washed over me, covering my chest, my arms, feeding the Dark Thing whose hunger for the blood of the wicked seemed to know no limit, no boundaries on this, the night of its birth.

The young thug’s body fell against me and I let it drop to the concrete, unimpeded.

I didn’t care who found this vermin first—the rats or the cops—it made no difference to me.

My work was done.

I had done my part, had exacted revenge and answered the call of the Dark Thing—the call for the blood of the guilty.

Justice was served.

And it wouldn’t be for the last time.

Reaper II: Neophyte

Amanda M. Holt

-1-

Shortly after the incident with the three men in the park, I came to decide that in a city as unforgiving as ours, it was time to start using my newfound abilities to affect change wherever I could.

I had bested three men, had been transformed from victim to avenger to victor in a matter of minutes.  I knew that there were men out there just as vile as they were, men who were monsters with human faces. 

I was certain that I was given this Dark Thing for a reason.

As with all things in Creation, this power had a purpose.

A destiny.

Exactly what that purpose was remained a great mystery to me, but it was a mystery that I intended to seek out with every resource that a fifteen year old had at her disposal.

I started with the internet.

There was no mention anywhere on the World Wide Web of the vampiric pliable yet diamond hard black exoskeleton of organic scales that had covered my body, that could reconstitute and restructure itself at my silent command. 

There was no mention of any real or factual person ever being able to grow razor sharp talons out of their nail beds with a single thought. 

A Google search with the keywords
talons vampiric living exoskeleton
had only turned up snippets of paranormal fiction and entries on insects.

Another search redirected me to superhero and comic book websites.

What
was
the Dark Thing?

What was I supposed to do with it?

Fight crime?

Right wrongs?

Exact justice as I had in the park, the night that I was attacked?

Was I to kill killers, then?

Be a vigilante?

It seemed as though the enigma was going to be shrouded in mystery until I stumbled across a resource or person who could give me some direction on my situation.

In the mean time, while I waited for the answers to my countless questions, I couldn’t just sit idly by and do nothing when I
must
have been gifted with the Dark Thing for a reason.

It had come to me in my time of need.

I had the living exoskeleton to credit for my narrow escape from certain death.

Where had this Dark Thing come from? 

I had no idea. 

It had itched and burned its way through my skin to the surface of my body when I was being attacked by those three men.

So had it always lived within me, like a ticking time bomb, just waiting for a life-threatening situation to activate it?

Had it been laying within me, like a predator laying in wait for a suitable prey, waiting for an opportunity to present itself, so that it could feed on the blood of corrupt men?

Was it genetic?

Some kind of mutation?

An infection?

A possession of some kind, by an entity?

Was it something…alien?

Something terrestrial that lived inside of people?

Why had I never heard of such a thing before?

Why wasn’t it in movies, in books, in bedtime stories to keep children in curfew?

I had so many questions…and so few answers.

I was certain of one thing – it could be used as a weapon. 

A very lethal weapon, at that.

If my first encounter with it was anything to go by, the Dark Thing seemed to serve little other purpose. 

Whatever it was, wherever it had come from, I was certain that it was meant for violence.

It had, after all, fed greedily on the blood of those three men in the park and seemed to draw me to areas like the ghettos, where I could be certain to find criminal activities. 

Where initially it had appeared only because those three men had attacked me, I soon learned that I could summon the Dark Thing at will, by merely
wanting
it to appear.

It didn’t hurt, burn, or itch to summon it forth – not like the first time, when it had first appeared.

That had been such agony!

I never wanted to experience anything like that ever again!

I cautiously began to experiment with summoning the Dark Thing forth.

I did this many times, though at first in the privacy of my bedroom, usually when my parents were away from the house, so as to avoid discovery. 

I marveled at it for hours on end, trying to understand how it functioned, what the possibilities and limitations of it were.  

Curiosity got the best of me as I experimented as much as I dared, learning to wield it as a weapon.  Interestingly enough, I seemed to be able to call it forth and control it at will for the most part, just by thinking about what I wanted it to do. 

I never tired of watching it spread over my exposed flesh, appearing on my skin first as a fine dark dust, no different perhaps than a cosmetic eye-shadow and then as a second skin that could be spider-web thin or armor-plate thick. 

At my silent command, it would cover my body with a thick, tough, leather-like hide, or I could wish it to contort to only the thinnest film covering me, so that the ridges of my fingerprints could even be seen through it.

I could turn the exoskeleton outside of my fingers into blades as long as swords and hone the second skin into a variety of different shapes and textures. 

I was pleased to find that it didn’t hurt, itch, or burn to transform now, as it had the first time it appeared. It just felt…weird when it moved, repositioned, or reconstituted itself, seeming to slither into place somehow while still being an inseparable part of me…

Much to my delight, I could even cover my clothing with the second skin, creating an even thicker barrier between my flesh and the world.

Then there was the evening that I experimented with a Bic lighter, to see if I could feel heat through the Dark Thing. Surprisingly enough, the damned thing seemed to be fireproof as well!  As I held the lighter beneath my transformed arm, running the flame from wrist to elbow to test my theory, I felt only a small fraction of the heat of the lighter through the second skin, just enough to sense that there was a heat source there.

So, it
was
fireproof. 

How useful would that be?

I imagined it would come in handy in the event of a forest fire, or if I had to slay any dragons, which of course would never happen.

Then there was the day that I took a pair of scissors, a filleting knife and an Exacto knife to my room and locked the door to guard against any interruptions. I willed my belly to thicken with the second skin. I tried everything I could do to gouge, cut, stab or otherwise inflict injury to myself through the skin of the Dark Thing. 

I had no such luck in damaging the skin, which was fortunate for me. 

So, I was stab proof, too while wearing the second skin.

Wonderful. 

It couldn’t burn. 

It couldn’t be cut. 

It had to be a weapon. 

At the very least, it was a shield. 

A shield that could cover my entire body… 

Was it meant to be some kind of suit of armor then?

The only thing that worried me now was bullets. 

I didn’t want to find out the hard way whether or not the Dark Thing was bullet proof.  I had a hunch that it might be, considering its durability, but I wasn’t going to push my luck by firing upon myself or daring a heat packing drug dealer to shoot me.

The secrets of the Dark Thing were new and for the most part unknown to me, which was also why I was going to start small, as far as my crime fighting endeavors were concerned.